Casta

Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful unspoken system of divisions. In Casta, Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson offers a striking portrait of this hidden phenomenon. By associating the caste systems of the United States, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how they have shaped our world, and how their rigid and arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today. With clairvoyant rigor, Ella Wilkerson unearths the eight pillars that connect caste systems between civilizations and demonstrates how our own era of escalating conflict and turmoil has emerged as a consequence of castes. Through stories from real people, she exposes how their insidious hangover emerges every day, documents its staggering health costs, and explores its effects on culture and politics. Finally, Ella Wilkerson points out the ways in which we can, and must, overcome its artificial divisions and move towards our common humanity.