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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

When my guest Ava Duvurney first read Isabel Wilkerson's book,

Cast, the origins of our discontents,

she was so stunned she re-read it two more times.

The best-selling book draws a line between India's cast system, the hierarchies of Nazi

Germany, and the historic subjugation of black people in the United States. The

book is academic in nature, 496 pages filled with facts and historical notes. People told Duverne, an acclaimed filmmaker

that it was too complex of a story to adapt into a film, but she did it anyway, writing and directing origin.

In the film, which is opening in theaters this week, Duvarnay makes Wilkerson, played by Angenu Ellis Taylor,

the center of her own story, as she explores how understanding the cast system

can deepen our understanding of what black people experience in America.

In this scene from the movie I'm about to play, Blair Underwood plays a persistent editor

who asks Ellis Taylor to write about the recent death of Trayvon Martin, a tragedy that is impacting

the nation at the time.

The editor had recently given her the 911 calls of the shooting

and now asks her if she's listened to them yet.

Listen? Yeah, yeah.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

It's a lot.

...