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The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead (Goodreads Author)

4.07 · Rating Details · 36,824 Ratings · 4,940 Reviews

Oprah’s Bookclub

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go ...more

Hardcover, 306 pages

Published August 2nd 2016 by Doubleday Books

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Sep 15, 2016 Emily May rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, arc, modern-lit, 2016

This is my first read by Colson Whitehead and it makes me think his style may not be to my tastes.

It's personal preference, I'm sure. There are some beautiful sentences, some genius structural choices, and many great ideas. Indeed, the re-imagining of history where the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad is a great idea in itself. I just found it lacking in anything resembling emotion. It's a cold, distant, impersonal novel and it didn't pull me in.

All of the secondary characters are unde This is my first read by Colson Whitehead and it makes me think his style may not be to my tastes.

It's personal preference, I'm sure. There are some beautiful sentences, some genius structural choices, and many great ideas. Indeed, the re-imagining of history where the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad is a great idea in itself. I just found it lacking in anything resembling emotion. It's a cold, distant, impersonal novel and it didn't pull me in.

All of the secondary characters are undeveloped and forgettable, but more than this, Cora herself wasn't given enough personality and development to really drag me into her world. The other central character - Caesar - is even less developed. I will probably have forgotten them both by tomorrow. Perhaps a first-person narrative would have better suited the subject matter and helped warm us to the characters.

In this story, Cora and Caesar are slaves at the Randall estate in Georgia. Caesar proposes an escape via the Underground Railroad, which Cora initially refuses, but later agrees to when her situation becomes more dire. The book is full of every monstrous thing committed by slavers - beatings, sexual assault, executions - but I felt distanced from it because of the impersonal nature of the narrative. It was horrific, but in the way a history textbook is horrific. We should have been right there in the middle of the story with Cora, hearts pounding in fear, and yet I felt somewhat removed, reading - it seemed - an almost clinical account of history.

The jerky structure that jumps from the main plot to some backstory and back again doesn't make it any easier to become invested. My interest in Cora's story waned some more every time the author picked us up and dropped us somewhere else. With no emotional connection to the characters and little opportunity to become connected to the plot, I felt like this book full of clever ideas never became one I was truly affected by - no enjoyment, no sadness, no anger, no nothing.

Colson Whitehead is obviously smart. He obviously did a shitload of research. But I just didn't care.

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Aug 15, 2016 Roxane rated it really liked it

Excellent writing, strong concept. I am personally burnt out on slavery narratives so I cannot say this was a pleasure to read. So much unrelenting horror. Whitehead does an excellent job of portraying slavery and America as a slave nation. The idea of the underground railroad, as an actual railroad, is so smart and interesting. I wish he had actually done more with the railroad itself. There were some sentences where I thought, "Now you are just showing off." The amount of research the author d ...more

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Nov 17, 2016 Navidad Thelamour rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, african-american-fiction, historical-fiction, read-2016, reviewed-on-amazon, reviewed-on-barnesandnoble, cultural-surveys, lit-fic, full-review

“All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.”

I was really looking forward to this read! I had an interesting relationship with The Intuitionist, having read it in college and not quite grasped it then came back to it later and enjoyed it more. I love everything that Colson Whitehead is about (and I hope to read Zone One soon), but this particular foray into his work turned out to be a little less than a love affair for me.

The Underground Railroad starts on the Randall planta ...more

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Aug 18, 2016 Angela M rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: edelweiss-reviews

3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a difficult book to read with the horrific treatment and gruesome punishments of African American slaves so much a part of the narrative, but it is essential that we read this and other books like it . We need these powerful, compelling and gut wrenching reminders of what life was like on a plantation in Georgia and other places in the South and what it might have been like to be a runaway. This story is told mainly from the perspective of a young slave woman named C ...more

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Jul 24, 2016 Trish rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-novel, america, race

For nearly twenty years the work of Colson Whitehead has been published to wide acclaim, his fiction and nonfiction both receiving many accolades. For this reason I was eager to have the chance to read his new novel that focused on the origination of the race debate in America—slavery. This new novel is due out September 13, 2016. Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read an e-galley.

The story centers around Cora, a motherless slave living on the Randall estate in Georgia. Wh For nearly twenty years the work of Colson Whitehead has been published to wide acclaim, his fiction and nonfiction both receiving many accolades. For this reason I was eager to have the chance to read his new novel that focused on the origination of the race debate in America—slavery. This new novel is due out September 13, 2016. Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for the opportunity to read an e-galley.

The story centers around Cora, a motherless slave living on the Randall estate in Georgia. When another slave, Caesar, suggests they attempt an escape, Cora initially demurs…until she draws unwanted sexual attentions from her owner.

The problems with this novel are not in the motivations. Those we understand. The problems are technical: an insufficiently developed Cora, and a mere silhouette of Caesar, the two central characters. When Caesar practically disappears from the narrative one-third of the way in, we barely notice, he was so inconsequential and underdeveloped. Talk about exploitation: he was simply a device.

But this is fiction, and the author can do whatever he wants, like create an actual underground railroad to eliminate the pesky problem of researching and charting a perilous journey to innumerable secret above-ground destinations that would allow us to picture and relive the terror, the deprivation, and the strength of character of all participants in the movement of hunted individuals within a dangerous environment. When the author suggests that white community members in South Carolina at this time were encouraging scientific experiments on, and recommending sterilizations for, freed black men and women, we don’t trust it and are annoyed that we are going to have to do our own research to verify the (outrageous if false) claim in the fictional narrative.

Problems of language are also present here, with untenable and frankly unbelievable hectoring challenges from Cora to her white rescuers along the trail: “You feel like a slave?…Born to it, like a slave?” …and Cora’s challenge to Ridgeway, the homicidal slave catcher, after a chatty exchange: “More words to pretty things up.” When Cora idly wonders whether a new wave of immigrants will replace the Irish, “fleeing a different but no less abject country” we are startled. Where did that come from and why would Cora have any knowledge of, or any particular interest in, conditions in Ireland or anywhere else, for that matter? It just isn’t reasonable and seems out of place.

Then we have the awkwardness of the language: “Cora kept her tongue,” and “Over the years life on Orchard Street passed with a tedium that eventually congealed into comfort,” or “The game of husband and wife was even less fun than she supposed. Jane, at least, turned out to be an unexpected mercy, a tidy bouquet in her arms, even if conception proved yet another humiliation.” These exceptionally ugly, charmless, and clichéd constructions add nothing to our pleasure.

Finally, there is no momentum in this novel. The storyline is broken into chunks that attempt to explain the backstory of some character or another or tell the story of a stop on Cora’s trail to freedom. Each break draws us further and further from any interest in Cora’s forward progress. It seems she (and we) will never get there.

I have seen the glowing reviews for this title, so take my criticisms as one among many. This would not be the title you should expect will give you a rich understanding of the real underground railroad for escaped slaves. For that we will have to look elsewhere. ...more

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Aug 02, 2016 Ron Charles rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, 2016-favorites

Nobody could wait for Colson Whitehead’s new book — including Oprah, so here it is, a month early. In a surprise announcement Tuesday morning, Winfrey chose “The Underground Railroad” as the next title for Oprah’s Book Club. Originally set to release on Sept. 13, the novel is available now, the result of an extraordinary plan to start shipping 200,000 copies out to booksellers in secret.

Far and away the most anticipated literary novel of the year, “The Underground Railroad” marks a new triumph f ...more

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Nov 03, 2016 Book Riot Community added it · review of another edition

I went into this book with expectations sky high (Oprah AND Obama picked it as a must-read) and I’m happy to report that Underground Railroad more than lived up to the hype. It’s a searing account of American racism and African American agency set against the backdrop of pre-Civil War America. I tend to be very picky about my historical fiction and, under normal circumstances, I’d be grumpy about a book that takes events from several different eras and has them happen simultaneously or suggested ...more

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Jun 16, 2016 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Cora, was a young slave on a Georgia plantation when her mother escaped, leaving Cora to the mercy of the other women in the quarters. Despite hiring a notorious slave tracker, she was never found.To say this plantation did not treat its slaves well is an understatement, some of the punishments devised caused me to, skim over them they are that horrific. When a new intelligent black man, a young man whose master had falsely promised to free him on her death, arrives as a new slave on the plantat ...more

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Sep 01, 2016 Lori rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I struggled through this... several times thinking of giving up. As a story revolving around such a 'heavy' subject the focus needed to be on a character less one dimensional and just a little bit likable. Cora was not a character that made me feel anything... there was no depth to her. Also, I disliked the whole idea of the Underground Railroad being an actual physical railroad which made no sense to me. Almost made it somewhat cartoonish. It would've been somewhat redeemable if there had been ...more

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Jan 09, 2017 Luffy rated it it was amazing

The plight of slaves who are so badly treated that they are willing to risk horrendous punishment in an attempt to flee from their hellish circumstances, used to be all too common. In this historical fiction, our resident rebel is Cora, a young woman who is ready to try and escape.

This book and its subject matter put things into perspective. Life used to be hellish or thereabouts to anyone not a man, and not white. Given that teenagers nowadays have it easy, very easy compared to their ancestors ...more

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Dec 06, 2016 Brina added it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, southern-lit, african-american-literature, magical-realism

DNF-- the characters did not resonate with me. If I were to compare Underground Railroad to Homegoing, I thought the latter to be the better book this year. Underground Railroad was tough to get into and perhaps if more action had occurred in the first part of the book, I would have liked it more.

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Aug 29, 2016 poingu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 21st-century-favorites, male-identified-authors, 2016, read-more

I finished feeling utterly exhilarated. This novel is a triumphant act of imagination.

I could write that there are many things I didn't like about it, too. I could list them, even. There were too many characters too superficially drawn; sometimes I felt there was too much narrative summary; the bad guys trended toward evil caricatures rather than multidimensional people; there was an odd distancing effect between the reader and any one character because there is so little offered of each charac I finished feeling utterly exhilarated. This novel is a triumphant act of imagination.

I could write that there are many things I didn't like about it, too. I could list them, even. There were too many characters too superficially drawn; sometimes I felt there was too much narrative summary; the bad guys trended toward evil caricatures rather than multidimensional people; there was an odd distancing effect between the reader and any one character because there is so little offered of each character's interior thinking.

But these flaws, if I can call them that in a book I loved reading so much, were in the end something like complaining about the boring parts in a Shakespeare play--for instance, the masque scene in The Tempest that always gets cut, or the hour of Hamlet that you never miss because it never makes the stage.

The core metaphor of the Underground Railroad is very powerful. On one level it signals early in the novel that this story is not meant to be taken literally, which allowed a lively revisionist history to bloom as the chapters progressed, in much the same way as The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. On another level the Underground Railroad feels like so much a more than a metaphor. To imagine a real railroad dug by African American hands and kept secret from their white enslavers is a slap-in-the-face reminder of the extraordinary accomplishments of African American slaves, that they could ever imagine a better life for themselves or imagine that they deserved a better life or could step out into an utter unknown of danger, and claim their freedom. By making this impossible Railroad real, Whitehead forces readers to acknowledge just how unbelievable and extraordinary the true history of African American resistance really is.

Another narrative technique I loved, something that worked well when it shouldn't have, was Whitehead's use of interstitial brief chapters to give the backstory of characters who had already died. On the surface I can't think of a more obvious way to grind the story to a halt than with a side story of a character who has already reached his/her literal end, but, wow. These were amazing. I was grateful for the detours. ...more

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Nov 17, 2016 Matthew Quann rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks

Update 17/11/2016: Winner of the 2016 National Book Award.

I rarely get to read books when they are in their acute hype phase, but I decided to put an Audible credit towards critical darling Colson Whitehead's latest novel. A couple drives back and forth across the province and I'm all done with The Underground Railroad and ready to render my verdict.

ALL ABOARD!

The premise is pretty enticing: a reimagining of the Underground Railroad as an actual railroad underground. It's exactly the sort of spi ...more

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Jan 27, 2017 Seemita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: other-awards-w, america, historical-fiction, culture, drama, toi, netgalley

[Originally appeared here (with edits): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li...]

Shaping a work around the theme of slavery and its many tentacles is a bit like shaping a lump of rigid clay into something cohesive and stable. On one hand, excessive pressure on misery squashes the vein of the narrative and on another, a voice too rebellious, hollows out the inherent pain of its victims. Drawing that line which does justice to this divide is certainly not an easy task and that is precisely where W [Originally appeared here (with edits): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li...]

Shaping a work around the theme of slavery and its many tentacles is a bit like shaping a lump of rigid clay into something cohesive and stable. On one hand, excessive pressure on misery squashes the vein of the narrative and on another, a voice too rebellious, hollows out the inherent pain of its victims. Drawing that line which does justice to this divide is certainly not an easy task and that is precisely where Whitehead shines.

'The Underground Railroad' is an allegorical tale, spoken through the life and times of Cora. Her grandmother, Ajarry, from Western Africa, was a worker on the sprawling Randall plantation in Georgia, where, eventually, she passed on the tarnished legacy to her daughter, Mabel and granddaughter, Cora. Slave owners measure their success in the amount of tyranny they exert and Randall was not the one to walk against the league. However, 16-years old Cora was made of sterner stuff than most around her and harboured a burning desire, every instant, to break free. One fateful night, she manages to escape, with a compatriot, Caesar and makes her way to the underground railway station wherein a train promises her to scoop them away from the hell. And thus, begins her relationship with the unending maze of underground railroads that remains faithful to her survival till the last page of this book.

Whitehead draws a riveting picture of the slavery regime, with his nuanced characterization and feisty story-telling. The image of Cora is, all at once, an amalgamation of the bright and subdued; almost as if, she grows big and small in tune with her undulating escapes and captures. Even as she understands that she will remain perennially hunted, she is besieged with the dreams of a housewife. Whitehead takes extra care to keep Cora, a normal woman with not-so-normal scars.

Cora always fell asleep following Martin’s visit, sometimes after an interval of sobbing and sometimes so quickly she was like a candle being blown out.

As the adult Cora begins a new life in South Carolina under a false name, Bessie, between her chains and freedom, stands her fate and the perilous slave-catcher, Ridgeway. Ridgeway is fascinating in his ambition. He pursues Cora like a trained police dog and licks his lips in malice at her capture from a Stationmaster’s house. He also takes an orphan under his refuge and grants him a decent life of an account keeper for him. His dualities make him a human and a pariah, in a strange, stinging way.

She had never seen him rush or hurry. The man moved with exquisite calm, like a leaf drifting on the surface of a pond, making its own way on gentle currents.

Whitehead understands that secondary characters lift the statement being made by the protagonist to greater heights and thus, etches his’, with great tact. His terse descriptions of the slave camp in the conversations of its inhabitants are a subtle way of expressing their acceptance. From the apprehensions hanging thick in air in the houses of those who shelter Cora, to the womanly advice that comes in the dormitory Cora resides in as Bessie, just the right note of tension is released into the narrative to reflect the constantly alert mind of Cora. As the book says, “Whether in the fields or underground or in an attic room, America remained her warden.”

This is a hard-hitting tale of physical, social and psychological wounds that slavery inflicts and in a way, an appeal to stop the pursuit which has only taken a more refined and sophisticated garb in the current times. Otherwise, destination might turn an illusion soon and journey might assume, a very noxious connotation.

[Note: Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for providing me an ARC.] ...more

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Seemita Waqas wrote: "I marvel at your ability of assimilating the nuance and putting it bare to the light of your fluid prose, Seemita - this analysis is als ...more
Jan 27, 2017 02:01AM

Waqas Seemita wrote: "Waqas wrote: "I marvel at your ability of assimilating the nuance and putting it bare to the light of your fluid prose, Seemita - this ...more
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Sep 16, 2016 Snotchocheez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4 stars

You gotta admire Colson Whitehead's creative tightrope act here. He puts a hyperreal spin on the scourge of slavery (and all the concomitant indignities stemming therefrom) wrought upon blacks by whites. That he achieves this hyperreality without compromising historicity is remarkable.

The Underground Railroad, as you certainly can imagine from a novel about the slavery era, is not easy to stomach. Whitehead pulls no punches here: the slave life depicted on the Georgia plantation is grues ...more

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Aug 17, 2016 Taryn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: race-and-ethnicity, historical-fiction, received-from-publisher, brutal, netgalley, top-to-read

3.5 Stars. Cora is a slave on the Randall plantation, the place where she was born and where her grandmother and mother were also slaves. Caesar, a new arrival on the property, offers her an opportunity to accompany him on the Underground Railroad, but she is hesitant. When leadership on the plantation changes hands and Cora's circumstances get even worse, she decides to take a chance and flee with Caesar. Not one to let his property get away, Terrance Randall sends a determined slave catcher a 3.5 Stars. Cora is a slave on the Randall plantation, the place where she was born and where her grandmother and mother were also slaves. Caesar, a new arrival on the property, offers her an opportunity to accompany him on the Underground Railroad, but she is hesitant. When leadership on the plantation changes hands and Cora's circumstances get even worse, she decides to take a chance and flee with Caesar. Not one to let his property get away, Terrance Randall sends a determined slave catcher after the duo. As Cora and Caeser embark on a horrifying journey through the heart of America in search of freedom, the dangers of being caught are always at the forefront of their minds.

“If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.”

I try to avoid blurbs, so I thought this book was going to be straightforward historical fiction. It was so different than I expected and it defies classification! It isn't historical fiction in the traditional sense and it doesn't claim to be. The actual train running underground is the first clue that liberties will be taken with historical facts, although the horrors are all very real. It sometimes felt like Cora was traveling through time, as well as the country. This collapsed version of history made the message clearer than if the events been spread out over decades, similar to how an expressionist painting can be a more accurate representation of its subject than a more realistic portrayal. The almost fantastic nature of the story made me feel unstuck in time*, which made it easier to apply the message broadly and prevented me from compartmentalizing it as the distant past.

Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.

It's impossible to know Cora's actual age, but she thinks she is around sixteen or seventeen. Her mother ran away when she was a child and she resents being left behind to fend for herself. She's emotionally restrained from the abuse she has endured from both slave owners and fellow slaves. The one thing Cora "owns" is "a plot three yards square and the hearty stuff that sprouted from it." The plot was passed down to her mother from her grandmother and to Cora once her mother ran away. At one point another slave decides to challenge her ownership of that small piece of land. I fell in love with Cora the moment she challenged that grown man in order to protect the only thing she had to call her own.

After Cora escapes the plantation, her journey leads her through multiple states. Each state has its own culture and it was interesting to experience the worlds Whitehead created. At the beginning of each leg of Cora's journey is an actual runaway slave advertisement. I was confused by those until the end, because I wasn't sure how they tied into Cora's story. (This might be a Kindle-only problem!) While they are all affecting, the last one is especially poignant. The state sections are also separated by short chapters revealing the back stories and motivations of some of the characters Cora encounters, including her grandmother, the slave catcher and a South Carolina doctor. One of the things that struck me most in those chapters (that I can mention), is how the slaves' bodies were pilfered even after their deaths. The character chapters were interesting, but they were my least favorite part. I wanted to get back to Cora!

Why had they believed that two lowly slaves deserved the bounty of South Carolina? That a new life existed so close, just over the state line? It was still the south, and the devil had long nimble fingers. And then, after all the world had taught them, not to recognize chains when they were snapped to their wrists and ankles. The South Carolina chains were of new manufacture—the keys and tumblers marked by regional design—but accomplished the purpose of chains. They had not traveled very far at all.

South Carolina was my favorite section because it reminded me so much of the dystopian speculative fiction that I like to read. South Carolina seems significantly better than what Cora just escaped from, but something isn't right. As Cora reveals more about the community, it appears that much of their independence is an illusion. Cora's strange job assignment is a highlight of this section. Sterilization and medical experimentation popped up decades before I would have expected, but the juxtaposition of those events with the physical chains that Cora just escaped was very effective.

The weak link—she liked the ring of it. To seek the imperfection in the chain that keeps you in bondage. Taken individually, the link was not much. But in concert with its fellows, a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness. The people she chose, young and old, from the rich part of town or the more modest streets, did not individually persecute Cora. As a community, they were shackles. If she kept at it, chipping away at weak links wherever she found them, it might add up to something.

I was most engaged with the story when I was at Cora's side. About halfway through, it started to lose its emotional grip on me. In North Carolina and Tennessee, Cora became mostly an observer. Those chapters felt long to me, even though they were interesting and important. There were more character introductions that read like dry biographical accounts. Sometimes the order in which events were revealed made me feel disoriented. For example, I felt thrown into the Indiana setting at 77%. At 84%, the timeline between Tennessee and Indiana is finally explained. That doesn't seem like very long to wait, but I had all these nagging questions that kept me from focusing until I got those answers. A similar thing happened in South Carolina, though not as pronounced. Even though I had issues with those sections, there were still so many powerful and memorable parts: Cora watching community events through the hole in the attic, Freedom Trail, the desolation. a scene reminiscent of the Tulsa Race Riot (though that certainly isn't the only one). The aforementioned scenes would have been right at home in a horror novel.

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn’t stand.

While it didn't always engage my heart, it did engage my brain. What is freedom? Are you free if you lose your chains, but your actions are still bound by the ruling majority? Are you free if your pursuit of liberty and happiness is always under threat by fearful neighbors? Why should someone have to forgo their rights for the majority's psychological comfort? To what extent are we trapped into our roles by systems beyond our control? How far do you have to get from injustices before they can be put behind you?

A notion crept over her like a shadow: that this station was not the start of the line but its terminus. Construction hadn’t started beneath the house but at the other end of the black hole. As if in the world there were no places to escape to, only places to flee.

The Underground Railroad shines a light on the tensions and distrust that we still experience today. It questions the notion of freedom and attempts to hold a mirror up to the "true face of America." The writing was emotionally distancing for me, but it was thought provoking and a unique take on the subject. It won't do you any favors on a history exam, but it goes much deeper than that. I finished the book wanting to read everything Colson Whitehead has ever written!

If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.

If you liked this book, you might want to try:
• Gulliver's Travels - Mentioned in the story and the editor's letter.
• Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - It has been a long time since I read it, but I remember it feeling authentic and strange at the same time.
• We Love You, Charlie Freeman - It's primarily contemporary and has a more young adult feel, but it also shares many themes. I was reminded of Nymphadora, Dr. Gardner, and Miss Toneybee-Leroy many times!
• The Retrieval - (Netflix) Time period, tough choices.

“We can’t save everyone. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing’s going to grow in this mean cold, but we can still have flowers."

________________________
I received this book for free from Doubleday in exchange for an honest review. This book was scheduled to come out in September, but it's actually out NOW!

*Kurt Vonnegut quote
...more

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Oct 22, 2016 Julie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, usa-historical, american-south, read-2016, best-of-2016

"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves," stated First Lady Michelle Obama at this year's Democratic National Convention. Her words seemed to come as a surprise to many, those who had either forgotten or had never known that black hands enslaved by white masters built the iconic edifice of our democracy.

As we come to the end of an extraordinary eight years of the nation's first President of color while witnessing the continued systemic racism that pervades every corner of ou "I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves," stated First Lady Michelle Obama at this year's Democratic National Convention. Her words seemed to come as a surprise to many, those who had either forgotten or had never known that black hands enslaved by white masters built the iconic edifice of our democracy.

As we come to the end of an extraordinary eight years of the nation's first President of color while witnessing the continued systemic racism that pervades every corner of our collective American culture, as we engage in open, honest dialogue about white privilege, how black lives matter, and denounce the wretched anti-immigrant language spewed by politicians and political candidates, we must also acknowledge and work to overcome the continued ignorance of our nation's darkest and ugliest history- a history that has led us inexorably to the painful circumstance of contemporary racism.

In his breathtaking novel The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead demonstrates the earth-shattering power of an artistic voice to carry the legacy of the past into our now . He takes what we know to be true, but breaks free from the confines of history to create a brilliant work of fiction.

Cora is a young woman enslaved on the Randall cotton plantation in Georgia, like her mother and grandmother before her. She is the voice, the eyes, ears and body by which the reader witnesses and suffers the brutality of slavery- the rape and beatings, the whippings, torture and murder of the men and women who make up her community, however transitory and temporary it is. Cora “had seen men hung from trees and left for buzzards and crows. Women carved open to the bones with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Bodies alive and dead roasted on pyres. Feet cut off to prevent escape and hands cut off to stop theft.”

Cora's mother escaped years earlier, leaving her young daughter—a betrayal and an abandonment that burns deep in Cora's heart. Knowing the horrors that await a captured runaway slave, escape is only a fantasy, until Cora meets Caesar, a new arrival on the plantation. Caesar tells her about about the free north where he once lived and the way out of their imprisonment, by way of an underground railroad. He convinces her to flee, and we as readers are led from the nightmare of plantation life to the heart-stopping tension of escape.

The Underground Railroad takes on a hallucinatory affect, as Whitehead makes literal the metaphorical network of safe houses that ran from the southern United States north into Canada in the 19th century. In reality, it was neither underground nor a railroad, but in this author's vibrant and vital imagination, the underground railroad is an almost faerie tale-like system, complete with stations and conductors hidden just beneath the scorched earth of slavery.

Chapters of Cora and Caesar's escape alternate with the stories of other characters in the world they are fleeing, most notably the slave hunter in pursuit, Ridgeway. Ridgeway tracked but never found Cora's mother, Mabel, and this failure drives him to pursue Cora from state to state in a near-frenzy of diabolical hatred and determination.

The surreal nature of the narrative makes the reality of slavery even more present and vivid. It is hard to grasp, and yet essential that we do, our recent history and how it continues to shape our present. Colson Whitehead has written a bold and terrible, beautiful and mythic novel that will hold you from the opening pages and not release you, even after you come to its end. Highly recommended.
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Aug 10, 2016 Jennifer rated it liked it

Shelves: 2016-books, historical-fiction

"Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood."

Colson Whitehead's much-anticipated book The Underground Railroad tells the story of the antebellum South while centering on the escaped slave, Cora. Whitehead's sparse writing style makes the horrors of slavery -- and dangers for all those who tried to escape or aid and abet those who escaped -- all the more striking. These vignettes stand out like lone figures on a blank canvas.

The idea o ...more

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Nov 12, 2016 Britany rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: people-mag-rec, botn, bookriot, historical-fiction, oprah-picks

Colson Whitehead takes history and spins it into something new by bringing to life the Underground Railroad- literally! Cora, an orphaned slave on a Georgia Plantation decides to take her future into her own hands and escape to the North. Cora's mother- Mabel, escaped when Cora was only 13, leaving her behind to grapple with being alone and abandoned. Mabel is presented as idealistic, as she was never captured and returned to the farm. In fact, the owners and the slave catcher see her as "the on ...more

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Apr 21, 2016 Jessica Woodbury rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, authors-of-color, historical-fiction, best-2016-arcs

About halfway through The Underground Railroad, I started to see the next turn around the bend. I knew what was going to happen next. This isn't because of lazy writing, it's because the story rises beyond itself and becomes almost an allegory or fable. What happens to Cora simply becomes inevitable. The beauty of this book is that while it has that deep communal feel of folk tale, it also lives vibrantly through its characters. This is not archetypes and cardboard cutouts going through motions About halfway through The Underground Railroad, I started to see the next turn around the bend. I knew what was going to happen next. This isn't because of lazy writing, it's because the story rises beyond itself and becomes almost an allegory or fable. What happens to Cora simply becomes inevitable. The beauty of this book is that while it has that deep communal feel of folk tale, it also lives vibrantly through its characters. This is not archetypes and cardboard cutouts going through motions to make a moral point. This is a book whose characters are fully alive. The details of their lives are richly expressed. It feels new and interesting. These are not characters you've met before. These are not the same old staunch abolitionists and earnest slaves in the stories we tell ourselves of our history. I cannot remember another book about this era that so completely brought the world to life in my mind.

Choosing to read a book about slavery means choosing to immerse yourself in brutality, violence, and inhumanity. But there's something essential about reading this kind of book. In the United States it's too easy to forget the dark times in our history. While this book isn't easy or light, it is deeply moving and very powerful.

I've thought about doing a Reading Pathways post for Colson Whitehead before. Reading Pathways is basically a post where you tell people the first 3 books by an author they should read to see what their writing is like. But with Whitehead this is an impossible task. Every book is completely different. He not only changes genres but writing styles. A Whitehead book is not recognizably a Whitehead book, and that is, to me, a huge feat.

The one thing you can usually count on from Whitehead is to leave reality just a little. (Though there are exceptions like Sag Harbor, one of my favorites.) And it happens here, too. When I was a kid and I learned about the underground railroad in school, no one ever told me it was a metaphor. I'm not sure I knew what a metaphor was. So for a few years I thought it was a literal underground railroad, with tunnels and trains and it seemed legitimate. After all, escaping slavery must take some kind of miracle, making your way across hundreds and thousands of miles when anyone could catch you and turn you in was just as fantastic an idea. The little bit of fantasy in this book brought back that memory, and the burst of magical realism works very well. If only because you need a miracle. You need something beyond the realm of reality. Cora needs it and you want it for her.

A spectacular book. I haven't even started on the prose yet, but it's luminous and delicate and strong and vivid and I don't have enough words for it. It's truly impressive to have a book where every sentence feels so meticulous but you never get bogged down in the words.

I could go on. And I'm sure others will. This book's page will be stuffed with glowing reviews soon, I'm sure. Just do yourself a favor and get this book. And if it's not out yet, go read some backlist Whitehead (starting with The Intuitionist, which is probably the closest book to this one, would be my recommendation) and get ready. ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 Laurie Anderson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, best-of-the-best

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is my favorite book of 2016 - amazing, heartbreaking, and imaginative. Powerful.

Are you getting the sense that I liked it? I LOVE this book. I can't wait to re-read it, highlighter in hand. It is a master class in the art of storytelling and a key to deeply understanding the racial injustice and unforgivable inequalities in America today.

The opening section set on the Georgia plantation made me weep. That part of the story alone makes the book priceless, IMHO, but Colson Whitehead doesn't ...more

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Dec 09, 2016 Christy rated it it was ok

Whitehead’s book not only was selected by Oprah’s book club (not so impressive, perhaps) and also won the non-fiction National Book Award, but was the first book ever selected to be shared free to the literate world via a set of excerpts published by the New York Times. It was just THAT good, apparently, to many. I did not think so but did appreciate reading more of his thoughts in various media, and his understanding that the race relations and the racism of today can only be understood in the
Whitehead’s book not only was selected by Oprah’s book club (not so impressive, perhaps) and also won the non-fiction National Book Award, but was the first book ever selected to be shared free to the literate world via a set of excerpts published by the New York Times. It was just THAT good, apparently, to many. I did not think so but did appreciate reading more of his thoughts in various media, and his understanding that the race relations and the racism of today can only be understood in the context of all the history of race and racism in the US that has come before now.

While I appreciated much of the accurately portrayed, especially brutal treatment of slaves by White slave-owners, and do think those parts are educational for the many Whites particularly in the US that have not learned what they should about the history and nature of slavery in the US, this book was weak, right? Dude just wrote it too quick, or something, even though he did decent research on the actual Underground Railroad and slave conditions and treatment in the South. Besides Cora, who had a bit better development, the rest of the characters seemed particularly under-developed, artificial, with relationships and interactions that were superficial and odd. For example, consider the fake conversation between Cora and the station master that sounded like a simile of “oh, dear!” Thomas the Tank Engine dialogue, having a daughter who adored that fascist little ditty as a youngster? As a narrative, it was insulting to thinking people, but maybe he meant it as YA - unsure. Overall, the dialogue was particularly awkward and did not seem authentic.

While the abuse and torture of slaves appear correctly portrayed, I doubt if slaveowners willingly killed slaves like this, given slaves were pricey property and valuable commodities to their businesses. While some objected to the play of time and space and the inclusion of 20th-century prejudices and exploitation of Blacks including eugenics, forced sterilization, and the Tuskegee Black Airman syphilis experimentation, they were some of the few, creative and engaging parts for me.

I’ve studied social studies and multicultural education for 30 years, and particularly race and ethnic relations, but can still get facts wrong about slavery. This is why the silly subway of “underground railroad” annoyed me to no end. Over a decade ago, I’d attended a Humanities Council workshop in New Hampshire that linked African textiles with quilts sewn by slave women with alleged messages with escape directions secretly encoded. The female educators in the room all swooned, and took copious notes. Often I question everything I hear, but I swallowed this one, “hook, line, and sinker.” I was horrified to find how wrong I was (having shared a book about the quilts with students studying to be elementary teachers) and dismayed to find a cottage industry among African-Americans for “replicas” of such quilts. (One for sale has a map noting a way for slaves to “Canada”, even though that nation-state didn’t exist until a couple years after the Civil War.)

I think the negative or critical reviews have taught me a bunch more than all the positive ones. I agree it was “Disney-esque”, and had similarities to the drivel of “Harry Potter”, and I particularly agreed with the view that slavery is too serious, too much the worst page of American history, far too little emphasized in our history books and classrooms, and just not something to be made into a “gimmick”. Given that the reality of slavery, the failure of Reconstruction to significantly help the lives of recently “freed” slaves (mostly still living slave-like as indentured servants), through the Civil Rights movement culminating in the ’64 Civil Rights Act and the ’65 Voting Rights Acts (under-enforced and thus dismantled), and encompassing the rise of police brutality against Black males, in particular, and the Black Lives Matter movement, the idea of an actual subway-like “underground railroad” seemed more distracting and silly than educative. I know I can’t be objective, with decades-long work in Civil Rights, and am long dismayed by how the critical history to understanding African-Americans is peripheralized in our K-12 curriculum, just as US Blacks often are in their lives today.

This New Yorker article (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...) from last August provided the critique I shared with this work. I was particularly concerned since I’d learned as an “expert” (ha!) in Social Studies curriculum that the Underground Railroad and escaping slavery is often a more popular topic in the K-8 curriculum than specifics on slavery itself. I appreciated how Schulz understood Whitehead was exploiting the “perilous lure” of the Underground Railroad to readers of the NYTs (e.g., mostly White) and that the topic gives “moral comfort” and provides “White heroes” to those of us that should still be struggling with the immorality of slavery and how that is linked through direct history to the persistence of White-on-Black racism to this very day. Schulz notes that many fewer slaves found freedom through the Underground Railroad than our history books would lead us to believe, and there were likely fewer White “heroes” (White abolitionists) involved and more Blacks involved in mostly informal routes of escape (including the famous Harriet Tubman).

If interested, I was driven to inquire into why is this considered such a great piece of literature by so many by the influence by a one-star review by one of the GRs greats, an internationally appreciated reviewer, “Trish", at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... What does she have wrong, I'd ask all those that gave this five-stars?

Some White liberals are angry when I bring up the default of “Whiteness” in the US or the problem of White privilege in GRs reviews. I must ask again, though - why are so many Whites reading this, and with such acclaim? The only answer that makes sense to this old, anti-racist White ally educator is that it’s about the overwhelming denial of racism by many US Whites. (We could make an obvious comparison with the pivotal role of race in Trump’s win, but let’s not..) Whiteness and white privilege is what this book’s popularity is about, sharing a story that makes Whites feel uncomfortable while simultaneously satisfying craven desires to read shocking portrayals of how African slaves were treated, but really making us feel more comfortable and essentially good that we’re reading about Blacks but not having to do anything about the current racism in the US.

To understand African-Americans and racism in realistic social contexts, I’d much more recommend Ward’s (The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race) and Coates’ Between the World and Me.

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Aug 18, 2016 Jessica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I actually feel a little bit bad that I didn’t like this book more. I felt like I was expected to reach the end and rave about it. But maybe that’s the problem – perhaps I was just expecting too much?

I also wonder if maybe my opinion may have also been shaped by the fact that I too recently read another, vastly different alternate history about the Underground Railroad, Underground Airlines, which left me completely engrossed. This one was, at times, a bit of a slog to get through and that’s a s I actually feel a little bit bad that I didn’t like this book more. I felt like I was expected to reach the end and rave about it. But maybe that’s the problem – perhaps I was just expecting too much?

I also wonder if maybe my opinion may have also been shaped by the fact that I too recently read another, vastly different alternate history about the Underground Railroad, Underground Airlines, which left me completely engrossed. This one was, at times, a bit of a slog to get through and that’s a shame.

I didn’t mean to read two books with such similar conceits so close together. I took Airlines with me on a work trip to Denver, where I too quickly devoured it before getting drinks with a co-worker. We walked past Tattered Cover and he said to me, “Do you mind if we go in?” Since you don’t even have to work that hard to get me into a bookstore, we went in. I saw this approximately 3.4 seconds after walking in the front door, and gasped, “I didn’t even know this was out yet!”

That’s because Oprah decided to make it a Book Club pick and got the publisher to drop the book six weeks early. That’s how much hype there was for this book.

Here Colson Whitehead imagines that the Underground Railroad was an actual railroad that conveyed slaves out of the South towards freedom. The story follows Cora, a young woman who escapes from a plantation in Georgia alongside a friend, Caesar. Cora finds herself at several different stops along the way, each one offering a different (often anachronistic) representation of the horrors faced by black Americans. Part of my initial face-scrunching was due to the fact that this change seemed to serve little purpose—if there was an allegorical need for the change, it flew completely past my head. By contrast, Ben Winters’s alternate underground airlines was much more imaginative and fully realized. I know that the two variations were serving much different narrative purposes, but I kept thinking that if the slave catchers had found a station, why couldn’t they just follow the tracks to the next station? It was honestly a little distracting.

However, my real complaint was just that Whitehead’s narrative did little for me in terms of emotional connection. Few of the characters felt developed beyond archetypes and the extra chapters tucked into the narrative did little to expand them into people. If anything, these asides just disrupted the flow of the story. There were a handful of passages that made me want to grab a pen and start underlining, but overall the prose was precise in a way that felt kind of…clinical. Dry, disengaged.

I do wonder if the lack of engagement was my fault as a reader, unable to clear my head of comparisons not only to Airlines but also to Homegoing, which was a fantastic cross-generational exploration of the slave trade and its lasting effects on black America. Whitehead’s time-bending was perhaps meant to convey how slow progress has been for African Americans, to demonstrate that the end of slavery did not mean the end of persecution nor the guarantee of true equality. I do think that Whitehead did a fantastic job portraying how America continued to devise new ways to prevent blacks from rising up and reminding us just how far we haven’t come. I’m just not entirely sure he did it in a way that represented something new or fresh. It felt, in many ways, kind of redundant.

All that being said, I definitely hope that other readers will get more from this book than I did. It was certainly by no means a bad book and there are plenty of glowing reviews that you may agree with more than mine. 3.5 stars.

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Sep 17, 2016 Rincey rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, poc-author, 2016

This was so great in the most heartbreaking way. See my full review: https://youtu.be/XZlumzzzWBk

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Aug 21, 2016 Marie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, slavery, race

A work of amazing scope and breadth, shocking in the brutality of events, and so pertinent to politics and race discussions being held today. This is an important piece of literature reminding Americans of our history, the beginnings of race relations in our country, and you can follow this thread out to today and realize that we still have a long way to go. I love that Michelle Obama reminded us that the white house was built by slaves, at the DNR earlier this month, a fact that is also mention A work of amazing scope and breadth, shocking in the brutality of events, and so pertinent to politics and race discussions being held today. This is an important piece of literature reminding Americans of our history, the beginnings of race relations in our country, and you can follow this thread out to today and realize that we still have a long way to go. I love that Michelle Obama reminded us that the white house was built by slaves, at the DNR earlier this month, a fact that is also mentioned in this book. Our government is literally built on slavery.

"White folk eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up, too."

Cora is the protagonist of the novel, born on a Georgia cotton plantation, whose mother runs away from the plantation while Cora is still young. Cora is mistreated by the slave owners and fellow slaves alike, being shunned, raped, whipped, and degraded in every way seemingly possible. She is labelled a stray. The horrors she and others face on the plantation at the outset of this novel are shocking in their rendering and brutality.

“With strategic sterilization – first the women but both sexes in time – we could free them from bondage without the fear that they’d butcher us in our sleep.”

Caesar, a fellow slave, approaches her with an escape plan and she accepts. The book follows Cora’s tortuous escape route on a literal underground railroad, bringing a magical element into the novel. This isn’t the only time that Colson Whitehead takes liberty with historical elements. Each stop along the railroad highlight different aspects of African American history, that in reality may have occurred in vastly different times and places. While Cora and Caesar are in South Carolina, the Tuskegee experiment is being conducted on the black population, an event that in history does not occur until much later, 1932-1972, with penicillin becoming available for the treatment of syphilis in 1947. It was also here in South Carolina, where Cora is offered sterilization and is asked to help persuade the other blacks living there to accept this measure.

“In North Carolina, the negro race did not exist except at the end of ropes.” Again, the fear many whites have of blacks is manifested in hatred and horrific acts. The North Carolinians in the novel abolished slavery by abolishing blacks from the state; those who did not leave willingly were hung along the “Freedom Trail,” as decided by the “Justice Convention.” Such ironical terms are attached to such atrocities to emphasize the justification involved. “But they were prisoners like she was, shackled to fear.” Those who aid Cora are subjected to the same fate as blacks.

Whitehead tackles many heavy issues in this novel, even religion. Cora sees paradox and hypocrisy in the bible. Ridgeway and other use the bible to find justification for their cause and actions. It is interesting to me the continuing theme of religion, something that many people find such comfort and peace in, also becomes a tool or justification for divisiveness and war.

In Tennesee, Whitehead tackles the treatment of Native Americans. “Manifest Destiny” is cited as the ultimate narcissistic doctrine of self justification for the mistreatment and displacement of another race.

Some chapters are named for the location in which they occur, but others are named after a character in the book, to get better insight into their mindset and thinking. Interestingly and unsurprisingly, the thugs of society, found purpose in becoming slave catchers. Homer never received his own chapter, and this leaves the reader wondering why a free black would choose to spend his life working and living alongside Ridgeway, a monstrous slave-catcher.

Valentine’s Farm, in Indiana, becomes a relative utopia, where blacks can live freely and share ideas, at least for a time. Lander states, “And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes – that it is their right to take the land. To kill the Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.” These words are so important.

Whitehead’s words and message throughout this novel are direct, strong, and sweeping. We cannot be blind to our past. We cannot repeat the past by creating a culture of fear. We must live with our past, acknowledge our past and continue to make peace with it. There is so much to take in with this novel – the brutality of slavery and treatment of blacks outside of slavery, the kindness shown by those who were willing to risk their lives to help, the feeling that there is nowhere to escape to, only places to flee, the deeply seated racial prejudice and violence that continues, and so much more. I highly recommend this book to everyone! It is hugely pertinent to current times, beautifully rendered, and brilliant. There is so much to this novel, that I had to sit and think about it for days before attempting to put thoughts into a review. It is excellent material for discussion.

For discussion questions, please see http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=504. ...more

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Aug 13, 2016 Taryn Pierson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-release, author-of-color

I don't even want to write about this book because there's no way I'm going to do it justice, from the merits of the writing to the surprise early release to the could-not-be-more timely message.

But I have to do something with all this excitement bubbling up in my guts. (Too vivid?) So here we are.

First of all, OPRAH. Oprah is a poetic, noble land mermaid (credit Leslie Knope). She's a reader, and she wants everyone in her intergalactic Oprah orbit to be a reader too. And when she read an advanc ...more

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Oct 02, 2016 Trudie rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2016, historical, other-awards, best-of-2016, tob16

This book is very hard to define and that is what makes it such an extraordinary read. An interesting hybrid of historical and speculative fiction but so subtly done that you need to peer closely to see the mechanics of it. The most obvious conceit being the literal Underground Railway. I had many practical questions about this - isn't that an awful lot of digging ?, surely someone would notice underground trains ?, why couldn't slave catchers follow the rails ?...who controlled the timetable ? ...more

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Aug 11, 2016 Shannon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, an infamous passage from slavery to freedom exists beyond the metaphor as a network of train tracks and cars secretly connecting Southern states. Though her life was shaped by her mother’s escape, Cora first learns about the Underground Railroad from Caesar, who asks her to join him in heading north. Followed close behind by Ridgeway, a hired slave catcher, the novel follows Cora as she navigates her terrifying escape, along with the different live In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, an infamous passage from slavery to freedom exists beyond the metaphor as a network of train tracks and cars secretly connecting Southern states. Though her life was shaped by her mother’s escape, Cora first learns about the Underground Railroad from Caesar, who asks her to join him in heading north. Followed close behind by Ridgeway, a hired slave catcher, the novel follows Cora as she navigates her terrifying escape, along with the different lives she encounters along the way.

There’s a moment in the book where Cora notes the grandeur of South Carolina’s twelve story Griffin Building, which soars above the rest of the structures and holds one of the only elevators for hundreds of miles. It’s the moment I realized Whitehead’s novel tweaks more than just the metaphorical railroad, it also disrupts time in an endlessly fascinating way.

“At the auction block they tallied the souls purchased at each auction, and on the plantations the overseers preserved the names of workers in rows of tight cursive. Every name an asset, breathing capital, profit made flesh. The peculiar institution made Cora into a maker of lists as well. In her inventory of loss people were not reduced to sums but multiplied by their kindness.”
Though the novel never reads like fantasy, once the Underground Railroad is introduced, Whitehead bends the timeline and creates environments that blend the established plot with elements from different historical periods. Each of Cora’s stops acts as a sort of lens into the near future and a different way of seeing slavery’s impact down the line. It’s difficult to pin down without spoiling, but so subtle and masterfully done that it’s possible to miss, especially when gripped by Cora’s story.

This all adds up to a novel that can be viewed from endless angles with a deep cast of characters that contribute to the story in multiple ways. It’s no wonder The Underground Railroad is the newest pick for Oprah’s Book Club—it’s a brilliant novel just begging to be discussed.

More at rivercityreading.com ...more

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Jan 09, 2017 Lata rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: poc-author, poc-actor, auth-m, 2017-read

3.5 stars. Quick thoughts:

Horror-filled story following Cora, a slave on the Randall plantation, as she attempted to get free by travelling on the Underground Railroad. Which in this case is a literal underground railroad. That actually took this book a little into fantasy for me, rather than leaving it squarely in historical fiction.

Cora just kept attempting to get out of her situations over the course of the story. We see her at the Randall plantation at beginning of the story, and Cora ends u ...more

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Aug 28, 2016 Sarah (Presto agitato) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, historical-fiction, netgalley, american-south, slavery

Escaping from slavery was a daunting proposition. The escaped slave would have to leave a plantation without alerting overseers or tattletales, brave the elements with little in the way of supplies, meet up with people to provide assistance without giving himself away, and finally find a way to travel to friendlier territories. The participants in the escape had to keep absolute secrecy, with both slaves and abolitionists risking death at any misstep. Even after making it to the safety of a free Escaping from slavery was a daunting proposition. The escaped slave would have to leave a plantation without alerting overseers or tattletales, brave the elements with little in the way of supplies, meet up with people to provide assistance without giving himself away, and finally find a way to travel to friendlier territories. The participants in the escape had to keep absolute secrecy, with both slaves and abolitionists risking death at any misstep. Even after making it to the safety of a free state, the former slave could be captured and returned to the plantation and the grim consequences of flight at any time, all sanctioned by law.

The “underground railroad” that made these escapes possible was a marvel of human ingenuity, bravery, and dedication to principle. It also required a tremendous leap of faith from the escapee. Often there was no way to know what became of those who escaped before. Those who left were driven by optimism or naiveté or both. With others, the leap was more like jumping from a burning building; not really a choice at all.

In The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead explores many facets of these complex interactions. The focus of the story is on Cora and her escape, but we also get glimpses from many other perspectives, from those who participated to those left behind, and even the views of a slave catcher. The brutal and often heartbreaking story is told with a straightforward lack of sentimentality that is more powerful and affecting for its spareness.

This seemingly candid approach disguises other layers. There is allegory and metaphor so deftly woven into the narrative that it is hard to tease out. And then of course there is the underground railroad itself. In Whitehead’s vision, it is a literal underground railroad, rendering the metaphor into reality. This is right somehow, since in a kind of converse logic, the underground railroad of history had a power in the very idea of it. The vision it represented was as important as its reality, making the leap into the unknown possible.

A copy of this book for review was provided by Random House/NetGalley. Expected publication September 13, 2016. ...more

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About Colson Whitehead

I'm the author of the novels Zone One; Sag Harbor; The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award; John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, winner of the PEN Oakland Award. I've also written a book of essays about my home town, The Colossus of New York, and a non-fiction ac ...more

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“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.” — 19 likes

“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.” — 19 likes

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BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555488-the-underground-railroad?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1484323718l/30555488.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555488-the-underground-railroad?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead[/url]

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Preview — The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead