The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Randall Family
Does this volume really need any introduction?
Author: Colson Whitehead
Genre: Historical Fiction
Version: eBook
Publisher: Doubleday
Source: NetGalley
Amazon • Goodreads
Book Synopsis:
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves merely especially bad for Cora; an outcast fifty-fifty amongst her young man Africans, she is coming into womanhood – where fifty-fifty greater hurting awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her almost the Undercover Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go equally planned and, though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead's ingenious formulation, 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'due south offset end is South Carolina, in a urban center that initially seems like a oasis – only the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. Fifty-fifty worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to abscond again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for blackness people in the pre-Ceremonious State of war era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of 1 woman'southward ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
My Thoughts:
The Underground Railroad is told through the experiences of Cora, a 3rd generation slave. Cora's Grandmother, Ajarry, was kidnaped from her village and transported to America, and so forced into slavery and sold into the Randall family. Hither is where Ajarry lives and dies, and where Cora is somewhen brought into the world. Cora is born into a life of turmoil that no ane wants for their kid. Her mother, Mabel becomes the offset runaway to escape a Randall plantation, leaving backside everything to gain freedom, even her only daughter. From an early historic period, Cora has to fend for herself if she wants to survive, and that is just what Cora is: a survivor…
"Stolen bodies working stolen country. It was an engine that did not finish, its hungry banality fed with blood."
This book is the history of slavery in America, shown to us through Cora's journey. At its root, this book really isn't about Cora, or any of the other characters for that matter, then if you lot are looking for in depth character development, or a character driven story, this isn't going to be it. Cora represents all slaves and their commonage experiences with the secondary characters serving as catalysts to movement Cora along on her quest. This is a very plot driven story full of adversity. The story almost reminded me of Homer'south The Odyssey. Similar Odysseus, Cora has to confront many challenges forth the mode in her quest for freedom.
"Here'south i delusion: that we can escape slavery. Nosotros tin't. Its scars volition never fade."…"And America, too, is a mirage, the grandest one of all. The white race believes- believes with all its heart – that it is their correct to take the state. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers."
In The Undercover Railroad, Colson takes a few liberties with regards to the historical timeline and with his portrayal of the hush-hush railroad itself. The goal here was to be more informative then historically accurate. Cora's journey takes us from Georgia, to South Carolina, to North Carolina, to Tennessee, to Indiana and beyond. Each stop in Cora's journey she faces a new horror in the history of slavery. Horrors similar forced sterilization, the Tuskegee Study, "coon shows" (more than commonly known as minstrel shows or "blackface."), and the "freedom trail."
Whitehead's depiction of the underground railroad was very refreshing and unexpected, I was not anticipating the touch of magic realism. In reality, the Underground Railroad was a organisation of routes in which slaves would escape from their owners to the northern states or Canada. Along the way, there would be safe houses (stations) with people (conductors) who would assistance the slaves along the route to liberty.
This is how slavery should be depicted in literature: raw and uncensored. I "learned" almost slavery in school, but nothing like this. Men, women, and children were violently kidnaped from their villages, placed on overcrowded ships (where they faced illness, abuse, and deplorable conditions) and sent to America. One time in America, they were paraded naked in front of people and sold like livestock, forced to alive and work ((and past work of course I hateful grueling back breaking physical labor)) in horrifying conditions, driveling physically ((and by driveling physically, I mean browbeaten to near death)), sexually, and mentally… the list goes on. Information technology is i matter to read near slavery in text books, just it is a whole new ballgame to experience it in fiction. Text books are so matter of fact which feels detached, whereas in fiction, the reader is able to form an emotional connection to the situation.
Reading The Underground Railroad was uncomfortable. Information technology is graphic, horrifying, and heartbreaking. I felt ashamed of my race. That's correct, I said it. We should feel ashamed. Our state was built on slavery and racist ideals, which is something that we have conveniently forgotten over the years. I retrieve every white person should read this book. While we cannot become dorsum and change the by, we tin can learn from information technology and make an effort to go on to educate ourselves for a ameliorate future. This book is such an important reminder of where we accept been, and how much further we still need to go.
"The whites come up to this land for a fresh beginning and to escape the tyranny of their masters, only as the freemen had fled theirs. Merely the ethics they held up for themselves, they denied others."…"She didn't empathise the words, most of them at any charge per unit, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand information technology either, if all men did non truly hateful all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether information technology was something you could concord in your hand, similar dirt, or something you could not, similar freedom"
Going through some of the negative reviews for this one, I couldn't help just feel many of these people are missing the purpose of this book. You should go into this volume paying attention to what Whitehead is trying to convey with this book: the brutality and oppression of slavery, rather than characterization or a smooth flowing plotline. I literally read a bad review that said they didn't like this book considering information technology was as well tragic… Seriously?! Of class information technology's tragic! It is a book about slavery… Did they expect puppies and rainbows? Manifestly the truth is besides hard for some people to hear.
"Just nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it."
The Underground Railroad would brand for an excellent book club selection. Oprah selected it for her book society, Oprah's Volume Order, fifty-fifty before the book was published. Rumor has information technology she even pulled some strings to take the book published a calendar month early. She liked it THAT much. You lot tin read a fascinating interview she did with Whitehead here → Oprah's Interview With Colson Whitehead.
"Sometimes a slave volition be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway all of a sudden reverie amongst the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early on-morning dream. In the heart of a song on a warm Sunday nighttime. Then it comes, always – the overseer'south cry, the telephone call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a man beingness for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude."
This is probably i of the most powerful novels I have ever read. I tin can see why information technology was selected every bit one of the winners of the 2016 National Book Award. Since finishing this volume, I've often establish myself thinking about it. It seems that this one is going to exist i of those books that sticks with me for years to come.
My Rating:
*Large thanks to Doubleday for providing me a re-create via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Nearly the Writer:
I'thousand the author of the novels Zone 1; Sag Harbor; The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award; John Henry Days, which won the Immature Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Volume Accolade, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Noon Hides the Hurt, winner of the PEN Oakland Award. I've also written a book of essays near my abode boondocks, The Colossus of New York, and a non-fiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker called The Noble Hustle. A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, I live in New York Urban center.
My latest book, The Clandestine Railroad, is an Oprah'south Volume Club selection.
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Source: https://cover2covermom.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/book-review-the-underground-railroad-by-colson-whitehead/
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