Caste
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4.5 • 22 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Brought to you by Penguin.
'The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power - which groups have it and which do not'
Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful, unspoken system of divisions. In Caste, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson gives an astounding portrait of this hidden phenomenon. Linking America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how our world has been shaped by caste - and how its rigid, arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today.
With clear-sighted rigour, Wilkerson unearths the eight pillars that connect caste systems across civilizations, and demonstrates how our own era of intensifying conflict and upheaval has arisen as a consequence of caste. Weaving in stories of real people, she shows how its insidious undertow emerges every day; she documents its surprising health costs; and she explores its effects on culture and politics. Finally, Wilkerson points forward to the ways we can - and must - move beyond its artificial divisions, towards our common humanity.
Beautifully written and deeply original, Caste is an eye-opening examination of what lies beneath the surface of ordinary lives. No one can afford to ignore the moral clarity of its insights, or its urgent call for a freer, fairer world.
© Isabel Wilkerson 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Oprah calls her new book club pick “a game-changing, revolutionary, profound look at how we got where we are in terms of inequality.” And she’s right. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson—bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns—takes us on an eye-opening journey as she excavates and reframes history. Her astounding deep dive into racial hierarchy in the United States pulls no punches. Drawing parallels to India and Nazi Germany and blending history, sociology, and powerful stories of lived experience, Wilkerson argues that the U.S. has always operated through a race-based system of caste. Her historical reframing gives us a new language for talking about racism and helps explain what it means to be casteist, or “invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it.” Wilkerson backs up her assertions with meticulous research, illustrating how caste permeates every aspect of American life: from politics to health outcomes to interpersonal relationships to the ways we learn to be ourselves. Caste effortlessly makes history personal, because it is. If you only read one book about race in the U.S. in your lifetime, let this be it.
Customer Reviews
I read this book so I could then watch ‘Origin’ the movie
I am changed, I am no longer ignorant, I will continue to be part of the movement of people who oppose racism.
It took a while for me to get through it all as I had to stop, reflect, let go and move on with some of the more brutal truths of America’s past.
This is only the second book I’ve read about racism, it will not be the last. Thank you.