While grappling with tremendous personal tragedy, Isabel sets herself on a path of global investigation and discovery. Despite the colossal scope of her project, she finds beauty and bravery while crafting her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
Isabel explores the idea of how race may not be the only determining factor in bigotry, since, e.g., in India, everyone may be of the same "race", but bigotry still occurs by caste. Similarly, although Jews of European descent may have been considered "White" in some parts of the world, in Nazi Germany they were defined as an inferior race to be exterminated. Wilkerson visits Germany and debates friends about how slavery compared with the Holocaust, "subjugation" versus "extermination".
"A moving drama that's unafraid to ask big questions, Origin honors its source material with powerful performances in service of a deeply emotional story."
- Critic consensus, rotten tomatoes
