Caste

Author: Isabel Wilkerson
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2020
Pages: 496
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. using riveting stories about people - including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others - she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves againt; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Review: This book was on my "to be read" list since it was published in 2020. I read The Warmth of Other Suns in 2018, and was excited to see this author had written another book. 

Since this year's Friends and Fiction reading challenge for January is book with a single word title, this seemed like as good a time as any to dive in. Initially I was taken aback by some of the statements/conclusions Wilkerson made, but she convincingly supported her arguments. I'm not 100% on board with everything she says, but there is a lot of food for thought in these pages. This book will stay with me for a long time, and has certainly given me a new perspective.