Temple Emanu-El’s Kol Tzedek Speaker Series Presents:
One Time Only Livestream Event with
Isabel Wilkerson, Author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents“
March 31, 2022
The 2022 Kol Tzedek presentation–to be delivered by Isabel Wilkerson, will draw from her most recent #1 New York Times Bestseller “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”, published in 2020. Based on her deep research into the history of caste systems, Wilkerson delves into our country’s treatment of Native Americans and African Americans as well as what the Nazis learned from studying America’s caste history and applied to their plan for elimination of the Jews. Given the rise in antisemitism and acts of hatred against other minorities, her topic is extremely relevant during these troubled times.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning bestselling author of “The Warmth of Other Suns”, Wilkerson has taught at Princeton, Emory and Boston universities and lectured at more than 200 other higher academic institutions in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Let us be inspired by righteous voices.
Isabel WIlkerson and Bryan Stevenson The Importance of Caste
More About Isabel Wilkerson:
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestsellers “The Warmth of Other Suns”, and “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”.
“Wilkerson’s work,” in the words of The American Prospect magazine, “is the missing puzzle piece of our country’s history.”
“The Warmth of Other Suns” won the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors, and was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. TIME Magazine named it one of the “10 Best Non-Fiction Books” of the decade. The New York Times Magazine named Warmth to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.
Her recent book, “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents”, was published in August 2020 to critical acclaim and became a Number 1 New York Times bestseller. Dwight Garner of The New York Times called it, “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.” Oprah Winfrey chose it as her 2020 Summer/Fall book club selection, declaring it “the most important book” she had ever selected.
Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her deeply humane narrative writing while serving as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “championing the stories of an unsung history.”
As the historian Jill Lepore observed in The New Yorker: “What Wilkerson urges, isn’t argument at all; it’s compassion. Hush, and listen.”
Recording of this event is not permitted. For more information on this Speaker please visit prhspeakers.com.
