Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Warmth of Other Suns, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Migration and Freedom
History, Memory, and Identity
The Legacy of the Migration
The Economics of Racism
Love and Family
Decision, Consequence, and Regret
Summary
Analysis
New York, 1997. Harlem has completely changed since George Starling arrived in the 1940s. Places like the Savoy Ballroom have long shut down, Black elites have left, and poverty and crime have skyrocketed. Most other longtime residents are dead or gone, but George loves the neighborhood anyway, and his neighbors know and take care of him. He has plenty of regrets, but leaving Florida for New York, where he could be a free man, isn’t one of them. The local drug dealers and sex workers proudly tell him about their successes in school or rehab, even though they’re often obviously lying, and he tries his best to set them on the right track.
As always, George focuses on making a small but honest contribution to his community. His outreach in Harlem is also a way to try to atone for his children’s fate. The changes in his neighborhood are strikingly similar to those in South Shore, the area where Ida Mae lives in Chicago. They reflect the same basic pattern: elites and institutions systematically pull resources out of Black neighborhoods. Some do so because of racist ideas and stereotypes, while others simply follow racist policies (like the federal policy restricting mortgages to white people), and others still conclude that investing in Black people is a losing bet precisely because they see how racism continually disadvantages them. But regardless, this pattern gradually impoverishes the Black middle class—including George and his loved ones.
Themes
Los Angeles, Winter 1997. Robert starts getting sick, and he’s frustrated when his doctors don’t treat him with the same care and sympathy that he always gave his own patients. He has survived a heart attack and is on dialysis, but his mind is as sharp as ever. A live-in nurse named Barbara helps him with day-to-day tasks. And his siblings are all dead. He particularly misses his sister, Gold, who followed him to California and then succumbed to a deadly mix of “parties, liquor, [and] men.” His beloved Dr. Beck is gone, too. Still, Robert cherishes the small pleasures of his everyday life, even if he’s not supposed to have many of them (like bacon and fried catfish). He’s as meticulous as ever about his garden, too.
Robert brings a perfectionist’s eye to the ordinary trials and tribulations of growing old, like losing his loved ones, but he manages to make the best of his remaining days by keeping things in perspective. His frustration with his own doctors highlights how exceptional he was at his job. Indeed, the warmth and attention that he offered his patients are a reflection of his Southern culture—and this is no doubt one of the few respects in which he would agree that the South is superior to even California.
Themes
One day, after Robert gets out of the hospital, Ray Charles visits and brings him a dozen steaks. Then, Robert gets a letter informing him that he has cancer. He resents that the doctor didn’t tell him personally. Worse still, Barbara gets sick and has to quit, and no other nurse is ever as good. But Robert does receive some good news: his grandson Daniel gets into Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. However, he’s too sick to attend Daniel’s graduation.
The silly anecdote about Ray Charles’s visit demonstrates how Robert’s dedication to medicine has made a lasting impact on those around him. Of course, his approach to medicine couldn’t contrast more with the letter he receives about his cancer, which is so impersonal that it’s offensive. Meanwhile, his grandson Daniel’s success suggests that he has passed on his steadfast belief in being the best he possibly can.
Themes
Robert grows depressed. Soon, Wilkerson has to drive him to dialysis to make sure he actually goes. Then, he suffers a bad fall. Old friends and patients visit, including a man from Monroe who credits Robert with convincing him to trust Western medicine and ultimately saving his life. A few months later, Robert has a stroke, enters a coma, and passes away.
Wilkerson doesn’t just visit her protagonists occasionally for an interview—rather, in a testament to how much effort she puts into her research, she dedicates years to building relationships with them and becomes one of the most important people in their lives. Robert dies peacefully, and in his last conscious days, he’s surely aware of how many other lives he saved over the course of his own.
Themes
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Robert’s funeral is as well-attended and meticulously planned as any of his parties. Afterwards, the mourners assemble at his house and spend the rest of the day paying their respects. Robert’s nephew Madison remembers his uncle’s generosity and impossible perfectionism, his devotion to medicine and his love for California, and—above all—his infectious energy. Indeed, Robert’s friends, family, and patients remember him fondly to this day. One patient recalls that, after Robert operated on her, her blood pressure spiked and she nearly died. But even as she slept, Robert spent all night by her bedside, trying to help and praying. Robert is buried in a beautiful mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery, which is on a hill overlooking his favorite racetrack.
Robert’s funeral reaffirms what he and his loved ones already knew: he was a pillar of his community, an important resource, and an anchoring presence for the countless other Black migrants who came from the South to Los Angeles. Madison’s comments particularly demonstrate how Robert’s best traits inspired others to better themselves as well. And his patient’s anecdote shows that, no matter how much he loved the wealth and glamor that came with practicing medicine, his dedication to it was absolutely genuine.
Themes
Chicago, August 1997. Like most hardworking, law-abiding Black Chicagoans, Ida Mae can’t trust politicians to make her neighborhood any safer. So she takes matters into her own hands by regularly attending community meetings with the police at a local church. The attendees look over lists of reported crimes in the area, then anonymously write suggestions on index cards. (It’s too dangerous for them to reveal their identities.) After the meeting, Ida Mae privately tells an officer that thieves robbed the building next door to her house, but he ignores her.
Ida Mae remembers her neighborhood’s better days and knows that the young people growing up there deserve far better than they currently get. So she does her best to give back to her community, even though she recognizes that fighting its violence and poverty is an uphill battle. She knows that this kind of change ultimately requires systemic solutions, but she has seen systemic change work in the past, and she wants to help make it possible in the future, too.
Themes
At another meeting, the police warn residents about the local gangs and promise that they’re working hard. At a different one, they report that one of the regular attendees has been shot. An activist visits to speak out against an anti-loitering law, but the attendees support the law as a way to reduce crime. The well-known local city councilman attends another meeting with a TV crew and gives a political speech. And at one more, the community gets a visit from the new Democratic state senator they just elected: a young lawyer named Barack Obama
These anecdotes show how grave the situation in Ida Mae’s neighborhood has become. When Obama visits her group, Ida Mae witnesses history once again—just like when she saw Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak in Chicago 30 years before. In fact, she runs into both Obama and King by just living her daily life. This suggests that experiences like hers are far more central to the U.S.’s politics and history than most people tend to think. Put differently, Wilkerson argues that Black stories like the Great Migration have long been left at the margins of American history, when they are actually central to it. This book was published in 2010, the second year of Obama’s presidency. So Obama’s visit also suggests that the Great Migration’s legacy of empowering Black Americans in the 20th century made an unmistakable impact on U.S. politics in the 21st century.
Themes
New York, Spring 1998. After finding an unusual dark spot on his foot, George Starling needs to start dialysis. Then, he has a serious fall. He moves into a nursing home—where he has an even worse fall, hits his head, and ends up in a coma. His niece Pat and his estranged son Gerard visit him. Gerard, who is also on dialysis, breaks down when he sees his father. He relapses back into drug use, stops going to his own appointments, and dies just a few days later. Isabel Wilkerson also visits George in the hospital and pays her last respects. He dies soon thereafter.
George’s swift decline puts a tragic end to his son Gerard’s short, tumultuous life, perhaps by finally showing him the importance of something he neglected for so long: family. Gerard’s death also brings George’s own childhood family drama full circle, suggesting that there are some cycles that even the Great Migration and a lifetime of hard work cannot entirely break.
Themes
At George Starling’s funeral in Harlem, his neighbors remember his generosity, his choir sings, and his illegitimate son Kenny sobs quietly for the father he barely knew. In Eustis, his family holds another funeral. They remember him most of all as the well-to-do cousin who worked on the trains, brought gifts from New York, and always remembered his roots. Reuben Blye is there, too. George is buried at the only Black cemetery in Eustis.
The jubilant atmosphere of George’s funerals couldn’t contrast more with the somber fate of his family life. Indeed, the funerals show that, even if he never had particularly close relationships with very many people, he still managed to make a small, memorable difference in the lives of a vast number. And the fact that he has two funerals shows that, far more than Ida Mae or Robert, he built his identity around a combination of the North and the South.
Themes
