The Underground Railroad

I guess I hadn't read any of the reviews about Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Underground Railroad. I had no idea what to expect, but when I noticed I had the book on my shelf, I decided it was probably an important book to read now.

The Underground Railroad isn't the usual historical fiction depiction of a horrendous time in our country's history. In this novel, the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad, with platforms, tracks and different sorts of passenger accommodations. I found that off-putting. Each and every time Cora, the runaway slave from Georgia, was at a station, I'd kind of scratch my head. I think I wish I'd read the blurb before starting the book so I would have known at least this!

Whitehead goes further to imagine different realities for the  runaway slave as she makes her way north. In South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and finally Indiana. As soon as I turned the last page, I started researching whether some of the things Whitehead includes were realities. Much of the "history" in this novel is speculative. What if...

I found his language mostly brilliant, but the story didn't flow in one smooth path. He'd interrupt the story while jumping back in time to fill in backstory for one of the secondary characters. Once I realized that this was what he was doing, I was okay with it and it didn't disrupt my reading process terribly. But until I did, I found it distracting. The book took me a long time to finish, probably because I was reading from a paper-and-ink book, so I'd lose the plot a bit and have to turn back and reread.

It might sound as though I didn't really like this book. And I'm not sure that I did. But I did like the way Cora's story made me think. It made me think about what I already know about the Underground Railroad. It made me think more about what the journey north might have been like. It made me think more about what Cora's future might have been like. And it makes me think of the progress, or lack thereof, towards racial equality that our country has undergone. The details of this novel might not stick with me long, but the thinking that it pushed to the front of my brain will stick with me for a long time to come.

Toward the end of the novel, this quote really struck a chord.

"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."

Yes, here we are. Whitehead started this novel in 2000, worked on it for 16 years, published in 2016. Four years later, in the summer of 2020, that quote is more timely than ever.