this is an important read, filling a gap of the untold history of the Great Migration, a period from 1915 - 1970 when 6 million Black americans left the south fleeing the atrocities of segregation, continued slavery in the form of sharecropping, and violence at the hands of white people. they headed to the north, seeking a different kind of existence. i love the use of narrative nonfiction and found it be effective in this book. but i do have some criticism of the book 😬

i was really turned off of Wilkerson’s mention of employment participation, marriage, and not having “children out of wedlock” as somehow being important values to defend the Black people who migrated North in like a “they weren’t the cause of the social ills” type of way 🥴 yes, they were not the cause, but also, it’s not because of participation in capitalism 

i found it weird that there would be references to events she had discussed in early chapters, but mentioned as if we didn’t know anything about it, making certain things feel repetitive - like we would learn about the murder of Harry T. Moore and his wife in depth, and then later in the book their deaths would be mentioned all over again with almost the same level of detail, as if we hadn’t been informed about them 80 pages earlier 

towards the end, i got the sense Wilkerson was so attached to the individuals in this story, that she was including information about them that wasn’t relevant to the story being told, making it drag a little 

butttt all that being said i still think you should read this if you haven’t already