Our Next Book is Caste. Register Now.
Registration is open for the next School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) Equity Book Club discussion, which features Isabel Wilkerson’s latest book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents.
- Register here to attend one of the two discussions, held at 12:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, and 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 28 in Annenberg Hall (Room location will be announced in mid-August). Both sessions will include a short screening of Wilkerson’s interview with the New York Public Library.
- SESP students, faculty, and staff can request a copy of Caste by completing this form by Wednesday, Aug. 4.
Caste, which has been described by the New York Times as “the keynote nonfiction book of the American century”, examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
Caste “should be required reading for generations to come,” Joshunda Sanders wrote in the Boston Globe. “A significant work of social science, journalism, and history, Caste removes the tenuous language of racial animus and replaces it with a sturdier lexicon based on power relationships.”
Wilkerson’s previous book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, tells the story of the six million people, including her parents, who defected from the Jim Crow South. Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994, making her the first African-American woman to win the award in journalism.
The discussions will be moderated by SESP faculty members, including Cheryl Judice, practicum instructor; Regina Logan, assistant professor of instruction; and Dan McAdams, professor of human development and social policy.
Caste is just the latest installment in the series which began in 2019 and helps inform and challenge SESP’s scholarship, research, learning, and teaching. Other authors and books featured include Bryan Brayboy’s Carceral Colonialisms; Eve L. Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard; Anthony A. Jack’s The Privileged Poor; Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive; and Sally Nuamah’s How Girls Achieve.