Category: Cultural

UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, on Tuesday, Jan. 26 at 5 p.m. Pacific. The virtual presentation is part of UCSB A&L’s acclaimed Race to Justice series. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Ingrid Banks, Chair of the UCSB Department of Black Studies. Ticket holders will be able to replay this event for one week. 

Isabel Wilkerson has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, an interpreter of the human condition and an impassioned voice for demonstrating how history can help us understand ourselves, our country and our current era of upheaval. Her debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and many others. Her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Linking the caste systems of America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations. Using riveting stories about people – including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself and many others – she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day.

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