Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Pulitzer Prize winner Wilkerson makes her recent bestseller available to teens in this adapted edition. Delineating both the distinction between and the intersection of caste and race, the author focuses on three caste systems that have stood out in history: the officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany, the lingering caste system of India, and the race-based caste system of the U.S. After introducing this human hierarchy, she explains the "eight pillars," such as heritability, control of marriage, and cruelty as a means of control, that uphold the caste system. While the text skews scholarly toward suiting more advanced readers, Wilkerson's succinct explanations in short chapters keep the book from becoming too dense. Readers who progress through this background portion will appreciate how the author then relates the caste system to various facets of world history and everyday life in modern America. Here is where Wilkerson's lyrical style shines through as she narrates true, eye-opening, and even shocking vignettes of mostly lesser-known individuals who have encountered the negative effects of a caste system. The author intersperses her own experiences as a Black female journalist navigating the sometimes-unspoken yet enduring U.S. caste system. Through these stories, Wilkerson helps teens understand the country's systemic racism and consider how to deconstruct it. A thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis for readers ready to change the world.

Adapted for teens from the 2020 adult bestseller, this timely work urges readers to complicate conversations around American race and class divisions. "What does racist mean in an era when even extremists won't admit to it?" asks Wilkerson, who introduces readers to caste, "an artificial construction" not solely based on race or class but "a fixed and embedded ranking of human value." In America, she writes, there's a "shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid" persisting through generations. The parallels between caste and race are palpable throughout the book, though, Wilkerson writes, they "are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive." Unlike race, which is a mutable social concept, and class, which can shift through luck and achievement, the author makes the case for caste as a permanent fixture which can be traced to the 1619 arrival of enslaved Africans in the Virginia Colony. Prior to defining caste rankings and outlining its eight pillars, Wilkerson draws comparisons between India and the United States, referencing the treatment of Adivasi and Native Americans, Dalits and African Americans. Additionally, the book provides provocative insights into America's influence on Nazi Germany, whose researchers carefully studied U.S. race laws. Vignettes and memoir intertwine, illuminating the book's arguments. With easy-to-digest storytelling and elaborate metaphors embedded in extensive research, Wilkerson challenges readers to resist validating any semblance of hierarchy and to refer to history as a pathway for eradicating its stronghold. Compelling and accessible for a younger generation energized to build a better world. (index) (Nonfiction. 12-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* "Just as DNA is the code of instructions for cell development, caste is the operating system for economic, political, and social interaction in the United States from the time of its gestation," asserts Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), which garnered many honors, including the Anisfiled-Wolf Award. She explores slavery and the decimation of Native Americans, the "authoritarian regime" of Jim Crow, and the transformation of European immigrants into whites with caste status. She draws parallels between the U.S. and India, both colonized by Britain, both having achieved independence and developed democracy, yet both saddled with the legacy of severe social stratification. She also explores the history of the Third Reich for lessons on racial separation. Wilkerson details the eight pillars of caste, including divine will, heritability, enforcement by terror, and inherent superiority versus inferiority. Drawing on genetics, anthropology, religion, and economics, Wilkerson examines the history and structure of caste. But she also draws on her exceptional journalistic skills to relate stories of individuals who have suffered disadvantages and humiliation but have triumphed nonetheless. Finally, she offers the prospect for the elimination of a destructive system and recognition of a common humanity that allows us each to be who we are without judgment. This is a brilliant book, well timed in the face of a pandemic and police brutality that cleave along the lines of a caste system.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Warmth of Other Suns topped group read lists everywhere, and Caste will be the book to read in light of current discussions about systemic racism. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

*Starred Review* Pulitzer Prize winner Wilkerson makes her recent bestseller available to teens in this adapted edition. Delineating both the distinction between and the intersection of caste and race, the author focuses on three caste systems that have stood out in history: the officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany, the lingering caste system of India, and the race-based caste system of the U.S. After introducing this human hierarchy, she explains the "eight pillars," such as heritability, control of marriage, and cruelty as a means of control, that uphold the caste system. While the text skews scholarly toward suiting more advanced readers, Wilkerson's succinct explanations in short chapters keep the book from becoming too dense. Readers who progress through this background portion will appreciate how the author then relates the caste system to various facets of world history and everyday life in modern America. Here is where Wilkerson's lyrical style shines through as she narrates true, eye-opening, and even shocking vignettes of mostly lesser-known individuals who have encountered the negative effects of a caste system. The author intersperses her own experiences as a Black female journalist navigating the sometimes-unspoken yet enduring U.S. caste system. Through these stories, Wilkerson helps teens understand the country's systemic racism and consider how to deconstruct it. A thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis for readers ready to change the world. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

While researching her best-selling The Warmth of Other Suns, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wilkerson realized the importance of social order. In this outstanding work of social history, she explains how a rigid social order, or caste, is about power. Beginning with the first caste system in the United States, which started with slavery in 1619, Wilkerson details how caste would become the cornerstone of U.S. social, political, and economic policy, with whites being dominant, African Americans subordinate, and Native Americans conquered. She shows how immigrants walk into a preexisting hierarchy as they try to integrate into American culture, and how constructing one's white racial identity often means defining oneself from its opposite: Black. Powerful chapters parallel three systems—slavery in the American South, the reign of Nazi Germany, and hierarchies in India—in order to explore how each relied on control, including dehumanization, endogamy, and purity via immigration laws. Wilkerson reminds us that, despite the passage of civil rights legislation, caste endures in infrastructures and institutions, and that the election of Barack Obama was the biggest departure from this system in U.S. history. Incidents of historical and contemporary violence against African Americans resonate throughout this incisive work. VERDICT Similar to her previous book, the latest by Wilkerson is destined to become a classic, and is urgent, essential reading for all.—Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

In this powerful and extraordinarily timely social history, Pulitzer winner Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns) investigates the origins, evolution, and inner workings of America's "shape-shifting, unspoken" caste system. Tracking the inception of the country's race-based "ranking of human value" to the arrival of the first slave ship in 1619, Wilkerson draws on the works of anthropologists, geneticists, and social economists to uncover the arbitrariness of racial divisions, and finds startling parallels to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany. The Nazis, Wilkerson notes, studied America's restrictive immigration and anti-miscegenation laws to develop their own racial purity edicts, and were impressed by the "American custom of lynching" and "knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death." While India abolished formal laws that defined its caste systems in the 1940s, and America passed civil rights measures in the '60s, their respective hierarchies live on, Wilkerson writes, in "hearts and habits, institutions and infrastructures." Wilkerson cites studies showing that black Americans have the highest rates of stress-induced chronic diseases of all ethnic groups in the U.S., and that a third of African Americans hold antiblack biases against themselves. Incisive autobiographical anecdotes and captivating portraits of black pioneers including baseball pitcher Satchel Paige and husband-and-wife anthropologists Allison and Elizabeth Davis reveal the steep price U.S. society pays for limiting the potential of black Americans. This enthralling exposé deserves a wide and impassioned readership. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Aug.)