- Sue Kwong
One of the great things about organizing the Greatest Ever Chicago Book tournament was seeing how excited people got about it. When we started asking writers we knew if they might be interested in being judges, we were overwhelmed by the response. In the end, we had way more potential judges than judging slots—a couple of writers volunteered to write their own judgments on the final round, just to take part in the conversation.
Many of the people Studs talks to in Working live in Chicago, and certainly their accounts give you a feel for the amazing, vibrant diversity of this city and its quirks and particularities—but also a sense of something more universal. Maybe we are all unique snowflakes, but a snowball is a snowball, and there are certain qualities that all big cities share: they’re all an eclectic mix of people, making their way as best they can.
The Warmth of Other Suns was a large undertaking for Wilkerson, considering there is no other text that details the Great Migration as she does in this book. This migration helped shape the city into the place it is now.
