Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns. Her debut work won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was included in Time's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and in The New York Times's list of the Best Nonfiction of All Time. She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia.
If you haven't read Caste yet, you absolutely must
*Vogue*
Powerful and timely... I cannot recommend it strongly enough
*Barack Obama*
Such is Wilkerson's gift as a writer that she leaves you looking at
the world differently
*Vogue*
Elegant and persuasive... Caste will spur readers to think and to
feel in equal measure
*New York Times Book Review*
Probably the most important piece of non-fiction published this
year
*i News*
A surprising and arresting wide-angle reframing... Her epilogue
feels like a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions
through prophetic new language
*Washington Post*
An expansive interrogation of racism, institutionalised inequality
and injustice... This is an American reckoning and so it should
be... It is a painfully resonant book and could not have come at a
more urgent time
*Guardian*
Persuasive and unsettling... The case Wilkerson puts forward is
inspiring and hopeful... caste can be dismantled, setting everyone
free
*Observer*
Important and timely... If repudiation of past assumptions is the
first step towards healing, Wilkerson's book offers a powerful
frame for this. It is essential reading for anybody who feels
angry, guilty or threatened by the tangled issue of "race" in
America today
*Financial Times*
Magisterial... [Wilkerson's] reporting is nimble and her sentences
exquisite. But the real power of Caste lies tucked within the
stories she strings together like pearls... Caste is a luminous
read, bearing its own torch of righteous wrath in a diamond-hard
prose that will be admired and studied by future generations of
journalists
*Star Tribune*
Wilkerson's book is a powerful, illuminating and heartfelt account
of how hierarchy reproduces itself, as well as a call to action for
the difficult work of undoing it
*Washington Post*
Wilkerson unearths bone-chilling parallels in systems of oppressive
regimes that otherwise seem radically dissimilar to explain caste
and how it predated and helped define racism in America... Caste
offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love,
this book may well help save us
*O: The Oprah Magazine*
Wilkerson's genius as a writer is her ability to connect the macro
and the micro, to tell you the big story of what happened but to
make that story matter by linking it to the lives of those who
survived it... What in the hands of another writer would feel like
an abstraction attains, in her work, the vividness and emotional
power of lived experience
*Vox*
Haunting yet strangely consoling, in a world defined by its
divides, Caste connects. It reveals the 'unseen skeleton' embedded
in heinous acts of power but, in evocative prose that is full of
poise, reminds us what's possible when people come together. I
closed the book feeling enlightened and energised, ready to roll up
my sleeves and get on with the good work
*Johny Pitts*
Should be required reading for generations to come and is as
propulsive a reading experience as her debut... A significant work
of social science, journalism, and history, Caste removes the
tenuous language of racial animus and replaces it with a sturdier
lexicon based on power relationships
*Boston Globe*
A transformative new framework through which to understand identity
and injustice in America
*TIME*
Wonderful ... Prepare to have your mind expanded, your heart break
and your head slowly shake by Wilkerson's sublime combination of
skilful, analytical dissection and raw, emotional testimony
*Belfast Telegraph*
Caste makes a convincing, often scorching case that caste was there
at the birth of the nation, and we wrestle every day with that
legacy. It upsets the already rickety national myth that anyone in
the United States can be anything -albeit, without entirely
abandoning that hope
*Chicago Tribune*
Vital, brilliant and necessary
*Kae Tempest*
Similar to her previous book, the latest by Wilkerson is destined
to become a classic, and is urgent, essential reading for all
*Library Journal (starred review)*
This enthralling exposé deserves a wide and impassioned
readership
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
This is a brilliant book, well timed in the face of a pandemic and
police brutality that cleave along the lines of a caste system...
The Warmth of Other Suns topped group read lists everywhere, and
Caste will be the book to read in light of current discussions
about systemic racism
*Booklist (starred review)*
Wilkerson's book arrives at a key inflection point, an opening for
us to imagine, and then create, a system that's better than the one
we've inherited
*Bloomberg*
An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote
nonfiction book of the American century thus far... It made the
back of my neck prickle from its first pages, and that feeling
never went away. I told more than one person, as I moved through my
days... that I was reading one of the most powerful nonfiction
books I'd ever encountered... This book has the reverberating and
patriotic slap of the best American prose writing... [Isabel]
Wilkerson has written a closely argued book that largely avoids the
word 'racism,' yet stares it down with more humanity and rigor than
nearly all but a few books in our literature... It's a book that
changes the weather inside a reader
*The New York Times*
Caste is the most important book I've ever selected for my book
club. Should be required reading for humanity
*Oprah Winfrey*
It literally changed the way I thought about the world and deepened
my understanding of it more than any book I've read in a long time.
It is worthy of a lifetime of study. It is a magnificent gift to
our country and to people all across the world
*Bill Clinton*
Absolutely extraordinary
*Bryan Stevenson*
The superlatives people use to describe Caste are all accurate.
This is an astonishing book with a bold premise-that race in
America is a caste system like those in India and Nazi Germany.
[Caste is] well written, well argued and provocative. Wilkerson
made me think and taught me so much. You think you know the history
of racism and then a book like this reveals that it's so much worse
than you could have also imagined. Also she quotes me in the book!
I dropped it when I saw that. So unexpected. A lil ego boost. But
really that's just a small vanity. The book is amazing for what it
accomplished and how
*Roxane Gay*
Caste is rearranging my molecules right now. Isabel is one of my
heroes
*Ken Burns*
Yet another masterpiece
*Trevor Noah*
Wilkerson is unmatched in her ability to take colossal, weighty
concepts like race, class and caste and distill them into smooth,
accessible prose. These 496 pages fly by, even as you savor each
paradigm-shifting idea
*BookPage (Best Books of 2020: Nonfiction)*
It should be at the top of every American's reading list
*Chicago Tribune*
Isabel Wilkerson's study surpasses many books on institutional
racism by reframing the problem as something more vast and more
concrete than that. We suffer under a caste system, with a
dominant, shrinking group fighting for continued supremacy and the
lower caste fighting, still, for full human rights
*Los Angeles Times*
To read Isabel Wilkerson is to revel in the pleasure of reading-to
relax into the virtuosic performance of thought and form one is
about to encounter, safe and secure that the structures will not
collapse beneath you... Caste is a masterwork of writing- a
profound achievement of scholarship and research that stands also
as a triumph of both visceral storytelling and cogent analysis...
Wilkerson's use of a poetic focus on imagery and detailed
characterization allows us an intimate and personal relationship
with the lives of those she chronicles; when this empathic
closeness is juxtaposed with the harsh brutality of the historical
record the contrast is resonant and haunting, becoming a towering
memorial to those violated by the violence of caste
*National Public Radio*
Caste mingles comparison, history, sociology and a string of
shattering stories... More than appropriately, Wilkerson likens the
situation of India's Dalits to that of America's Blacks... India
needs mind-shaking books like Caste that unveil for India's top
layers (including for the willfully blind) the realities being
endured in the thick bottom
*India Today*
A big book about our biggest problem... Wilkerson looks at
structural inequality and bigotries in Germany, India, and the
United States, identifying the insidious nature all forms of caste
divisions share
*The Boston Globe (Best Books of 2020)*
[Wilkerson's] aim is as ambitious as it sounds, which makes Caste's
success as both a work of historical analysis and a tremendously
engaging read all the more gratifying. Part of the accessibility
and richness of the text come from the multiple points of entry
Wilkerson offers to the idea of caste: Theatrical analogies... sit
side-by-side with comparisons to the natural world... It's clear
that Wilkerson has tremendous belief in humanity-its capacity for
warmth and ingenuity, as well as for cruelty and intentional
ignorance-and that lends Caste a certain moral clarity and
directive
*The Austin Chronicle*
Some may argue that linking race relations in America to Nazi
atrocities and the Indian caste system is tenuous but [Wilkerson]
strongly argues her case with a powerful document that holds
lessons for aggressors and their victims all over the world... A
painful exploration of what human beings are capable of doing to
each other
*The Hindu*
A superbly written and impeccably researched study of a phenomenon
that is rarely discussed in American culture... Brave, clear and
shatteringly honest in both approach and delivery... A book that
cuts to the marrow of our caste system, exposes the rotten core
within, and deconstructs the beginning of it to expose its flaws
and why it shouldn't be used anymore... Extrapolating Wilkerson's
ideas to contemporary America becomes an unsettling exercise that
proves how right she is and how profoundly embedded into society
the caste system is... Her quest for answers frames everything and
acts as the perfect delivery method for every explanation
*San Francisco Chronicle*
A consummate storyteller... Isabel Wilkerson has written an
important book that reminds us of a comradeship of interwoven
histories
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
A landmark new study of the power of racial distinctions in
America... Wilkerson argues with staggering precision, clarity, and
conviction that caste cuts far deeper than any local or federal
law, prevailing attitude, or temporary cultural drift... Caste
draws heavily on the powerful mingling of narrative, research, and
visionary, sweeping insight that made Wilkerson's The Warmth of
Other Suns the definitive contemporary study of African Americans'
twentieth-century Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to
northern, midwestern, and western cities. It deepens the resonance
of that book (a seemingly impossible feat) by digging more
explicitly into the pervasive racial hierarchy that transcends
region and time... It provides a new and more nuanced diagnosis of
an ancient and chronic disease, a template for recognizing its
symptoms-even among those who only distantly feel their effects-and
a springboard to action in mitigating its impact in the absence of
a miracle cure or a panacea of absolution
*New York Journal of Books*
Isabel Wilkerson's latest is an immersive, unflinching taxonomy of
the unspoken social order underpinning all of American society
*Harpers Bazaar*
Full of uncovered stories and persuasive writing... Opening up a
new bank of language in a time of emboldened white supremacism may
provide her readers with a new way of thinking and talking about
social injustice... A useful reminder to India's many upper-caste
cosmopolitans... that dreams of resistance are just one part of the
shared inheritance of the world's oldest democracy and the world's
largest
*Mumbai Mirror*
Caste-beautifully written, original, and revealing-is an
eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of
what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life
today
*Arab News (Saudi Arabia)*
Persuasive and unsettling... The case Wilkerson puts forward is
inspiring and hopeful. Her writing incorporates and reflects the
anti-racist traditions embodied by figures such as African-American
liberationist W.E.B. Du Bois and the trailblazer of India's Dalit
movement, Bhimrao Ambedkar, who wrote: 'Caste is [just] a notion;
it is a state of the mind.' Like him, Wilkerson wants us to
recognise that caste can be dismantled, setting everyone free
*Guardian*
Caste seeks nothing less than to reframe our understanding of
America's original sin
*Miami Herald*
A small cohort of historians and intellectuals has been referring
to America's racial caste system for years, feeling that term is
more effective than racism, which many Americans prefer to regard
as a personal failing rather than an institutional force. Wilkerson
brings to bear the formidable interviewing and storytelling talents
she displayed in 2010's The Warmth of Other Suns to popularize this
reframing of race, a social construction with no biological
validity. It's a move that places American racism in the context of
other heritable hierarchies around the globe, especially the Indian
caste system, although Wilkerson is careful not to conflate the
two. This important book wrenches our established way of thinking
about race out of its rut and encourages us to see it anew, with a
fresh understanding of the damage it has done and the potential for
change
*Slate*
A free-flowing and impassioned work of living history
*PopMatters (Best Books of 2020)*
The book offers a searing description of the nature of caste-a
stratified, internalised hierarchy-which is instructive far beyond
America's elections... Caste provides a lucid description of
dynamics that extend far beyond the States
*New Humanist*
Wilkerson achieves a remarkable refocusing on race-a kind of
anthropological clarity. Wilkerson's use of personal and shared
anecdotes, historical stories and pointed metaphors makes the book
extremely readable... By utilizing a new terminology-dominant
caste, ruling majority, upper caste, subordinate, lowest or bottom
caste-surprising insights arise
*Iowa City Press-Citizen*
Indispensable... It asks Americans of good faith and any caste, but
especially the dominant caste, to use this tool, along with race
and class, to better understand why they have built such a
continuously and dangerously unequal society
*The Durango Herald*
The book's analytical description of caste is a valuable
contribution to the comparative study of social inequality, laying
bare how these features recur again and again across time and
space, and in the parallel contexts of the U.S., India and
Germany... By examining how identity-based difference is repeatedly
forged and institutionalised into hierarchies, Wilkerson's work
expands our broader understandings of social inequality as it
manifests across time and place
*The White Review*
Wilkerson's comparisons are profound and revelatory... What makes
this book so memorable is Wilkerson's extraordinary narrative
gift... Stories like these are painfully informative, making the
past come alive in ways that do not beg but scream for justice.
That said, Wilkerson is never didactic. She lets history speak for
itself, turning the events of the past into necessary fuel for our
current national dialogue
*BookPage (starred review)*
This examination of caste and its consequences on every aspect of
culture is unusual, eye-opening and of life-or-death importance. As
in her previous work, which she continues and deepens here,
Wilkerson lives up to the scope and significance of her subject
matter, delivering a book that is deeply researched, clearly
structured, well-written and moving
*Shelf Awareness (starred review)*
A memorable, provocative book that exposes an American history in
which few can take pride
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
Wilkerson's work, which has made numerous 'best of' lists including
Time, The New York Times, and Oprah's Book Club, is both lyrical
and life changing
*Yahoo! India News (The Best Books of 2020)*
Caste is a rich, well-researched and engagingly written meditation
on one of the most important subjects of our time
*Spectrum*
It is bracing to be reminded with such precision that our country
was built through genocide and slavery. But Ms. Wilkerson has also
provided a renewed way of understanding America's longest, fiercest
trouble in all its complexity. Her book leaves me both grateful and
hopeful. I gulped it down
*Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond
Mountains*
Like Martin Luther King, Jr. before her, Isabel Wilkerson has
traveled the world to study the caste system and has returned to
show us more clearly than ever before how caste is permanently
embedded in the foundation and unseen structural beams of this old
house called America. Isabel Wilkerson tells this story in prose
that is so beautiful, the only reason to pause your reading is to
catch your breath. You cannot understand America today without this
book
*Lawrence O’Donnell*
A riveting reframing of how power operates in our society. It's
been sparking conversations all over the country, and for good
reason
*Preet Bharara*
Sometimes we read something so fundamentally stirring that we find
ourselves speechless in the face of so many tumbling thoughts.
Caste is one of those books. Isabel Wilkerson is one of those
writers. She reminds us that 'we are responsible for our own
ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own
wisdom.' In this magnificent work of history, narrative, social
commentary, philosophy and inspired storytelling, she offers us a
new frame, a deeper focal point and new language to help us toward
a reckoning long overdue. Quite a gift
*Barnes & Noble (10 Best Books of 2020)*
What lies behind race and racism? Wilkerson focuses on the
architecture--the caste system, a ranking of people along with a
set of assumptions about them based on their so-called race or
phenotype--that allows for the expression of racism ... Wilkerson
spins a tale that is necessarily brutal and bruising, but always
suffused with tenderness for America's Black citizens and the
ignominies they continue to endure.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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