Isabel Wilkerson
Isabel Wilkerson | |
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George S. Polk Award Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Anisfield-Wolf Book Award |
Isabel Wilkerson (born 1961) is an American journalist and the author of
Wilkerson was the editor-in-chief of the Howard University college newspaper, interned at the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, and became the Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times. She also taught at Emory, Princeton, Northwestern, and Boston University.
Wilkerson interviewed over a thousand people for The Warmth of Other Suns, which documents the stories of African Americans who
Early life and education
Isabel Wilkerson was born in Washington, D.C. in 1961 to parents who left Virginia during the Great Migration. Her father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and became a bridge engineer after the war.[2]
Wilkerson studied journalism at
Career
In 1994, while the Chicago Bureau Chief of
She has been the James M. Cox Professor of Journalism at Emory University, Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and the Kreeger-Wolf endowed lecturer at Northwestern University and Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University's College of Communication. She also served as a board member of the National Arts in Journalism Program at Columbia University.[3][5]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Q&A interview with Isabel Wilkerson on The Warmth of Other Suns, September 26, 2010, C-SPAN |
After fifteen years of research and writing, she published
In a 2010 New York Times interview, Wilkerson described herself as being part of a movement of African Americans who have chosen to return to the South after generations in the North.[15]
Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents argues that racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system, akin to those in India and in Nazi Germany.[16]
A 2020 review in
Personal life
Wilkerson has been married twice. She married Roderick Jeffrey Watts in Fort Washington, Maryland in 1989.[21] Her second husband, Brett Kelly Hamilton, died in 2015 after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2000.[22]
Bibliography
Books
- ISBN 978-0-679-44432-9
- ISBN 978-0-593-23025-1
Essays, columns and lectures
- The New American Reader: Recent Periodical Essays, edited by Gilbert H. Muller (McGraw-Hill, 1997)
- "He Put a Spin on Design", in The Last Word: The New York Times Book of Obituaries and Farewells : a Celebration of Unusual Lives, edited by Marvin Siegel (William Morrow, 1997)
- "Superstars of Dreamland", in Best American Movie Writing, edited by George Plimpton (St. Martin's Press, 1998)
- We Americans: Celebrating a Nation, Its People and Its Past, edited by Thomas B. Allen and Charles O. Hyman (National Geographic Society, 1999)
- "Two Boys, a Debt, a Gun, a Victim: The Face of Violence", in Writing the World: Reading and Writing about Issues of the Day, edited by Charles R. Cooper, Susan Peck MacDonald (Macmillan, 2000). ISBN 0-312-26008-3
- Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century, edited by Anthony Lewis (Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2001)
- "First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10", in Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines: The Pursuit of Excellence, edited by Edward Jay Friedlander and John Lee (HarperCollins College Publishers, 1997); and The Princeton Anthology of Writing, edited by John McPhee and Carol Rigolot (Princeton University Press, 2001)
- Various articles, Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories: America's Best Writing, 1979 - 2003, edited by David Garlock (Iowa State University Press, 1998; Wiley-Blackwell; 2nd edition, April 18, 2003)
- "Interviewing Sources", Spring 2002 Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference Report
- "Angela Whitiker's Climb", in Class Matters, by correspondents of The New York Times (Times Books, 2005)
- "Interviewing: Accelerated Intimacy", in Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call (Plume Penguin Books, January 30, 2007)
- "America's Enduring Caste System" (cover story of The New York Times Magazine, July 1, 2020)[23]
Awards
- 1993 George S. Polk Awardfor Regional Reporting, in The New York Times
- 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Feature Writing[24]
- 1994 Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists
- 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship[25]
- 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction), winner, The Warmth of Other Suns
- 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Debut Author, nominated, The Warmth of Other Suns
- 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, winner, The Warmth of Other Suns
- 2015 National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities[26]
- 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Current Interest winner, Caste[27]
Wilkerson has also been awarded honorary doctorates from several universities:
- 1998: Hamline University[28]
- 2011: DePaul University[29]
- 2011: Niagara University[30]
- 2012: Howard University[31]
- 2013: Muhlenberg College[32]
- 2014: Southern Methodist University[33]
- 2014: Bates College[34]
- 2018: Middlebury College[35]
- 2022: Smith College[36]
- 2022: Colby College[37]
- 2022: Northwestern University[38]
- 2023: Occidental College[39]
Legacy
In 2023,
References
- ^ a b "30 Moments in Journalism". NABJ. Archived from the original on October 6, 2008. Retrieved June 18, 2008.
- ^ "Racism' Did Not Seem Sufficient.' Author Isabel Wilkerson on the American Caste System". Time. July 23, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ a b "Emory University Education Program". Emory University. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved June 18, 2008.
- ^ "First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10 (April 4, 1993)" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2008.
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson, Director, Narrative Nonfiction Program". Boston University. Archived from the original on December 5, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Random House official website.
- ^ "Great Migration: The African-American Exodus North". National Public Radio. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ Teresa Weaver. "The Shelf: Top Ten of 2010". Atlanta Magazine. Archived from the original on December 6, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ Laura Miller. "The best nonfiction books of 2010". Salon.com. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ "A Year's Reading: Reviewers' favorites from 2010". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ "Books of the Year: Page turners". The Economist. December 2, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ "Best nonfiction of 2010". The Washington Post. December 10, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ "The Best of the Best Books 2010". The Daily Beast. Retrieved December 12, 2010.
- ^ "Home". Anisfield-Wolf. Retrieved September 16, 2020.
- ^ McGrath, Charles (September 8, 2010). Charles McGrath, "A Writer's Long Journey to Trace the Great Migration", The New York Times.
- ^ a b Garner, Dwight (July 31, 2020). "Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' Is an 'Instant American Classic' About Our Abiding Sin". The New York Times.
- ^ "Nonfiction book review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". Publishers Weekly.
- ^ Borrelli, Christopher (August 3, 2020). "Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' is about the strict lines that keep us apart — lines that are more than race or class". Chicago Tribune.
- ^ "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction - Best Sellers". The New York Times. November 1, 2020. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
- ^ N'Duka, Amanda (October 14, 2020). "Ava DuVernay Back In Director's Chair For 'Caste'; Netflix Adaptation Of Acclaimed Isabel Wilkerson's Best Seller". Deadline. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ "Ms. Wilkerson And R. J. Watts Wed in Maryland". The New York Times. November 13, 1989 – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson Family Husband And Children". showbizcorner.com.
- ^ Wilkerson, Isabel (July 1, 2020). "America's Enduring Caste System". NYT Magazine. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power — which groups have it and which do not.
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson of The New York Times". pulitzer.org. 1994. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
For her profile of a fourth-grader from Chicago's South Side and for two stories reporting on the Midwestern flood of 1993.
- ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Isabel Wilkerson". Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ Pineda, Dorany (April 17, 2021). "Winners of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prizes announced". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
- ^ Past Honorary Degree Recipients - Saint Paul
- ^ "DePaul to Honor Array of Luminaries at 2011 Commencement Ceremonies".
- ^ "Niagara University 2011".
- ^ "Howard Alumna Isabel Wilkerson Receives Inaugural NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize".
- ^ "2013: Pulitzer Prize Winner and Nobel Prize Winner Highlight Honorary Degree Recipients at Muhlenberg | Muhlenberg College". Retrieved August 12, 2023.
- ^ "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson - SMU".
- ^ "Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson is Commencement 2014 speaker, joining honorands John Seely Brown, Glenn Close and David Shaw". April 21, 2014.
- ^ "Class of 2018 Celebrates Commencement | Middlebury News and Announcements". May 27, 2018.
- ^ "Commencement Program 2022" (PDF). smith.edu. Retrieved August 12, 2023.
- ^ "At Commencement, Students Empowered to Make Change - Colby News". Retrieved August 12, 2023.
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson named Commencement speaker".
- ^ "Isabel Wilkerson Addresses Class of 2023 at Commencement". May 26, 2023.
External links
- Official website
- Isabel Wilkerson Tracks Exodus of Blacks from US South - video interview by Democracy Now!
- Time: Isabel Wilkerson on Black America's Immigration Story
- The Lives Gained by Fleeing Jim Crow By Janet Maslin, New York Times Book Review
- Appearances on C-SPAN
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