Brenda's Bookshelf

When Colson Whitehead’s book, The Underground Railroad won the Pulitzer I was intrigued. I bought the book and then it just sat in my Kindle queue for a long while.  I could say that I was busy, or other books in the queue were more important, or make some excuse, but the truth is I was reluctant to read this book because it was such a hard and horrible topic.  As a white person of privilege, I know I need to face into the horrors of slavery, the unmet promises our country made as well as the racism and discrimination that blacks have faced and still face today. This is even more true for someone like me who lived outside the country during one of the pivotal events in black/white relations-the Civil Rights era. This book did not make it easy, but it did made it more real and it made me understand in a much deeper way the struggle for equality and the fight to end discrimination, and why #BLACKLIVESMATTER is so important today. This book should be required reading for everyone.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. She was abandoned by her mother, Mabel who fled the plantation for freedom when Cora was still a child. The plantation owners hired a slave tracker named Ridgeway, but he was never able to find Mabel even though he found plenty of other slaves who tried to escape. Considered an outcast by the other Africans on the plantation, Cora learns to fend for herself but as she grows into a woman the difficulty of doing that becomes more and more apparent. It is then that Caesar, a new arrival from Virginia, begins working on the plantation.  He begins to tell her of a underground railroad, – a real railroad with a locomotive and cars, that runs in underground tunnels between the south and the north, carrying escaped slaves to safety. Caesar knows where the closest station is located, just a few miles away in one of the towns near the plantation. With a little persuasion from Caesar and with the memory of a a horrible beating that kills a young slave child to add some incentive, Cora gathers her courage and decides to set out on the path that her mother set out on so many years ago. But the road to freedom is hard and Ridgeway is on their trail hoping to redeem himself by catching the daughter of the one that got away.

Colson Whitehead is a gifted writer. The story flows with vivid descriptions and Cora’s deep, insightful internal dialogue that acts as a commentary on what happens at each stage a long the way. Framing the underground railway as an actual railway may seem to be an unnecessarily crude literary device, but in Whitehead’s hands it is an inspired choice, creating a solidity and groundedness to the book as a whole. Whitehead weaves true events with fiction making a seamless whole that sheds an unwavering light on a horrific part of our collective history. There is no happy ending here, and there is so much left to do to atone for what happened. But I emerged after reading this book thinking that somehow it might be possible. or rather, I hope and pray that it might truly be possible.

Brenda’s Rating: ***** (5 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Everyone!

Book Study Worthy: YES

Read in ebook format.