“What if the underground railroad was a literal railroad?” This was a question the author, Colson
Whitehead, asked himself in 2000, but he wasn’t ready yet to write the
book. At some point, he began wondering,
“what if each state, as a runaway slave
was going north, was a different state of American possibility, for an
alternative America?”
I hadn’t read any of Whitehead’s other books, so I was
expecting a work of historical fiction, and I kept checking my memories of
African-American history until I caught on to the author’s use of imagination. The book combines elements of historical
fiction with what some might call “magical realism” and which reminded me of
Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The author draws on 19th-century
slave narratives including Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl” and Solomon Northrup’s “Twelve Years a Slave,” and oral histories of
former slaves gathered by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.
Historically, the “Underground Railroad” was a network of
people, black and white, that carried escaped slaves in their long journeys northward
to freedom. This network is part of the story,
but the author also creates an actual underground railroad system to carry the
story.
The main character is a teenager named Cora who was born on
a cotton plantation in Georgia and grows up as a “stray” after her mother, Mabel,
escapes. She survives rape and other
brutalities and is convinced by Caesar to try to escape with him when the
conditions of their slavery become even more horrendous.
In the narrative, Cora travels through several states which
Whitehead has reimagined as variations of history to evoke “Negro uplift,”
eugenics experiments, something that bears similarity to the Tuskegee
experiment, and night riders. Throughout
this time, she is relentlessly pursued by a notorious slave catcher,
Ridgeway.
The book’s conclusion is open-ended, with Cora heading
toward to St. Louis. Or could it be
Ferguson, Missouri? Or beyond?
This is a gripping story and an important book for our time,
if we are to come to grips with
America’s original sin and find our way together to a true
freedom for all.
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