The release date for the English version of 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' by
Isabel Wilkerson is Aug 2020. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
The Warmth of Other Suns' Pulitzer Prize–winning and best-selling author explores the hidden caste structure that has moulded America and demonstrates how human differences still determine our lives today.
“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. Caste hierarchy has nothing to do with morality or sentiment. It has to do with power and which organisations possess it.
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson explores how a rigid hierarchy of human rankings, or hidden caste system, has shaped America throughout its history and in the present. She does this by telling stories about real people and providing an immersive, deeply researched narrative that paints a masterful picture of an unseen phenomenon in America.
Beyond issues of race, class, or other distinctions, a strong caste system shapes the destiny of the country as well as the lives and behaviours of its citizens. Wilkerson examines eight pillars—divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more—that underpin caste systems across civilizations by connecting the caste systems of Nazi Germany, India, and America. She illustrates how caste's pernicious undercurrent is felt on a daily basis by telling compelling tales about real individuals, such as Wilkerson, baseball star Satchel Paige, a single father and his young kid, and Martin Luther King Jr. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast 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 against; 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. She concludes by outlining strategies for America to get beyond the harmful and artificial differences that exist among people and towards optimism about our shared humanity.