The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

From prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell 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 as planned Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

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TW: graphic physical and sexual violence

MY REVIEW:

“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.”

I really loved this book. It was well researched and structured and the idea of an actual railroad was really smart and added something different to the novel.

I have read some reviews saying that the book lacks emotion, that people weren't able to emotionally connect with Cora. In my opinion, you don't need to know the person to feel empathy and to be horrified when despicable and evil things happen to them, like in the case of this book, with everything that happens to enslaved black people (and everyone knows that this is just a glimpse of how wretched things were and still are today). I think the book was beautifully written and well executed. I found Cora to be compelling, she could be brash, she could be brave, she could be sarcastic, she was independent, smart, persistent.

While the book is fast paced, and you can't help but want to read it in one go, it is dark, brutal and emotionally draining so it took me a while.

The Underground Railroad should be required reading. While fiction, the background is real and so well researched, everyone should read it to educate themselves about slavery, race, white supremacy.

“Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties.”