Colson Whitehead

Originally published: New York: Doubledday, 2016.

The Underground Railroad

"Oprah's Book Club 2016 selection"--Sticker on jacket.

Ausrine Blazyte

All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

Chris Dailey

Period drama set in the United States sometime in the mid 19th century about a runaway slave, Cora, that rides a real Underground Railroad in search of her freedom. Balancing history, science fiction and intense human experience, Whitehead provides a visceral account of slavery, racism and the Black experience as Cora works her way north from her sadistic plantation in Georgia. Traversing cities, hellscape and utopia, the novel is about identity, self reliance, friendship, love and struggling to be free. The best scenes border on the surreal and can make you cringe. Beyond Cora and slave hunter with a sense of purpose, the majority of characters are flat and serve their purpose (e.g., cartoonishly evil slave master, flawless good guys). Full of twists, it's highly entertaining, and, more importantly, plainly and unapologetically exposes the experience of the American slave in a novel way.

Patrick Book

WHITE PEOPLE. Am I right?

Anyway, Colson Whitehead is an incredible writer. I loved everything about this story, particularly the structure. If that seems an odd thing to note, then read it and you’ll see.

Jackie Cunningham

This one is difficult to write a review for. Not because I didn't like it, obviously the 5 star rating suggests just the opposite. More because it's such a phenomenal read. Big and bold and challenging at times in how unrelenting and heart-wrenching it is. Honestly a book everyone should read.

Ryan Mateyk

As a young kid in elementary school, the Underground Railroad was a confusing concept. When first introduced, I like many others, imagined a train running throughout America, up into Canada, obscured underground like a primitive subway. This fantasy was quickly squashed but Colson Whitehead brought it back to life in The Underground Railroad. This was a heartbreaking, hair-raising adventure, perfect for those of us who retained our larger than life imaginations.

Although the book is critically acclaimed, I found it good, but not great.

Frederik De Bosschere

I found this book to be extremely dark and attentive to creating a look into what slavery felt like and what it’s endurance exacted on its victims. However I found it’s theme of freedom and escape too literally embedded within Ridgeway’s pursuit of Cora. It simplifies what she is running from into one singular person when she really needs to run from everything and everyone if she wants to escape from bondage.

Arie P

Once again, Whitehead makes the tough-to-read readable. 

One thing: each chapter is presented almost as a vignette. I'm on the fence about whether that choice is necessary. Or, maybe (probably!) I just didn't Get It. 

elizabeth

Once again, Whitehead makes the tough-to-read readable. 

One thing: each chapter is presented almost as a vignette. I'm on the fence about whether that choice is necessary. Or, maybe (probably!) I just didn't Get It. 

Sarah Sammis

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is at first glance, historical fiction about slavery during the running of the underground railroad. Cora, a slave on a plantation in Georgia decides to escape via the railroad after it is described to her by Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia.

Instead of the railroad being a metaphor for a series of connected safe houses along a route northward to the free states and ultimately Canada, Colson Whitehead imagines a literal underground railroad with cars that take riders not only to different cities but to different times.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2020/comm...

Maurice FitzGerald

This book laughably bad. It reads like a cross between a hollywood "prestige film" and young adult novel.

Patricia Nelson

Such a good book - I completely understand why it won the Pulitzer. The journey taken by people of color in this country is not a pretty one. This was a book club pick, and I was so glad we all read it and had a chance to discuss. This book will stick with me.

Underground Railroad

Anvar Cukoski 

Rohit Arondekar

Beautiful. Brutal. Honest. Just a few words I think describe this exquisitely crafted book.

Wynter

DNF @30%

I think this is just another case of emperor's new clothes. I see why the masses might love it and awards are being thrown at it, because it checks off all the necessary boxes that make books like these untouchable to criticism. Personally I found the characters unappealing and the story - uninspiring. But what about the atrocities, you might say. Yep, they are plentiful here, but presented as a laundry list of all possible horrors without emotional attachment to the story itself. 

I need to stop forcing myself to finish books that just don't do it for me, so I'm abandoning The Underground Railroad.

Prashanth Srivatsa

Cora escapes from a plantation farm in an attempt to seek freedom. With this rather simple premise, Whitehead has carved out a stunning journey through the mazes of slave-ridden America, exploring its ubiquitous and rebellious underground railroad network. What begins as an inspiring, fist-pumping escape quickly descends into a you're-damned-where-you-go narrative as Whitehead tests the meaning of absolute freedom, one American state at a time, and eventually allows the book to serve as a catalogue for racial abuse.

Stefanie  Uwah

Ya’ll. Go read this book.

 

I’ve read quite a few novels about The Underground Railroad. I’m used to the suspense of trying not to be sniffed out by a hound while hiding in trees. I’m used to the overwhelming pain. Many of those stories focus on the running, not the various destinations that an escapee can end up. In this book, however, you find out quite soon that the railroad is not a metaphor, it’s a physical structure moving passengers from place to place on its rickety tracks. The mysticism was taken out of the actual escape and I got to read about the black people and their experiences as they escaped the labyrinth of slavery. What an incredible read.

 

#BlackHistoREADS

Bahni Turpin

A Novel

Charlotte 

A book you borrowed or was given to you as a gift ✔

Brendan M

Colson Whitehead tells a fairytale of horror. His prose is fantastical in its imagery yet stark in its brutal realism. Magical realism works best when the fantasy illuminates the warped nature of the real. In exposing the madness of the institution of slavery, here Whitehead has demonstrated a mastery of the genre.

Sonja H

Sklaverei ist ein Thema, mit dem ich mich – bis auf ein paar Schullektüren – lesend wenig befasst habe. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass ich in meinem Alltag keine Berührungspunkte damit habe oder dass ich sehr offen und tolerant erzogen wurde. Ich sehe zwar, dass Rassismus nach wie vor existiert und ich habe eine Meinung dazu, aber es fehlen mir auf diesem Gebiet Erfahrungswerte.

Daher war ich auch nicht verwundert, dass mich dieses hochgelobte Buch nicht wirklich angesprochen hat.
Erinnert mich der Anfang noch stark an „Onkel Toms Hütte“, so waren mir all die Szenen, die Cora nach ihrer Flucht von der Plantage durchlebt, völlig fremd.
Kaum hatte ich mich einigermaßen in das neue Umfeld eingelesen und mich an neue Charaktere gewöhnt, zog mich der Autor schon wieder ein weiteres unbekanntes Terrain mit weiteren Agierenden.
Zwischen all diesen Situationen gab es darüber hinaus „Großaufnahmen“ der Schlüsselfiguren des Romans, die mich wieder aus dem bisher Gelesenen rissen. Ich konnte mich nicht in Ruhe auf die Geschichte einlassen und mich damit gedanklich befassen.

Zudem störte mich das oberlehrerhafte Auftreten von Whitehead, das sich wie ein roter Faden durch die Story zieht. Immer wieder vermag er nicht, einige emotional geladene Situationen für sich im Raum stehen und dem Leser die moralische Bewertung zu lassen. Nein, er schiebt oft ein einem Satz eine unumstößliche Aussage dem Geschehen hinterher, die sagt: „So ist es und nicht anders“.

„The Underground Railroad“ ist sicherlich ein gutes und wichtiges Buch, aber ich konnte mich damit nicht anfreunden.

Celeste Richardson

I so wanted to like this book. I appreciate and respect it, but it left me cold.

The enslavement of African Americans in the United States and the horrific ways in which they were treated is one of the two most heinous sins (alongside our treatment of Native Americans) in our national past. I have never been able to fathom how people could treat others as less than human over such a minor difference as skin color. And the fact that these slave owners viewed themselves as good and kind and “Christian” is one of the most appalling and ludicrous things I’ve ever heard. The systematic oppression and abuse of any subset of humanity, whether they are set apart by gender or religion or sexuality or something as simple as a different pigmentation, is so opposed to the teachings of Jesus that I am baffled by how anyone who considers themselves to be one of His followers can possibly rationalize it.
“The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.”
Going into Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning novel, I was hoping to see some new facet of this dark past, some deep and powerful truth that I as a Caucasian woman in the American South might have missed in my research of the topic. I wanted a revelation, which I understand is way too much pressure to put on any work of fiction, but I was unable to rein in this hope. What I got instead was a lecture housed in novel form. Yes, the slave-owning South was shown in all its horror, and the lives of slaves and those who sought to escape their bonds were presented in a way that balanced the stark and the descriptive. There were instances where the treatment of slaves was unspeakably brutal, as it truly was in our history. Whitehead also showed how even the whites who claimed to be more civilized and caring still saw African Americans as less, and incapable of making decisions for themselves even if they were no longer technically enslaved.
“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.” 
My problems with this book was my inability to empathize with any of the characters. Did I have sympathy for them? Absolutely. However, none of the characters felt real enough to truly care for. Everything I learned about them was told to me instead of shown. This resulted in cardboard characters with rich histories but no true personalities of their own. I was also incredibly frustrated by the ending, or lack thereof. It felt like Whitehead simply got tired of writing and decided to stop.
“Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.” 
I’m glad I read The Underground Railroad, but I’m even more glad that it’s over and that I can move on. It's beautifully written, but I couldn't connect with it no matter how hard I tried. For me, it was like Lincoln in the Bardo in this regard. I felt that Octavia Butler’s Kindred presented this horrific time period in our history with so much more grace and depth. Those characters, from main protagonist to secondary characters to even the antagonists, felt so much more real to me, and evoked far stronger emotions. I truly cared about each on of them and was invested in the outcome. I think I’m in the minority on The Underground Railroad; I know plenty of readers who were blown away by it. But if you’re like me and find yourself disappointed, give Kindred a try instead.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

This is not a book it's hurt and it should.

Dora Tominic

Disclaimer: this is not a review.

This is not a book it's hurt and it should.

Fraser Simons

For the longest time I thought I had read this book already. I must have picked up a book with a similar title or cover though. I realized I hadn’t read it when I watched the TV show, which is actually substantially different than the book in some ways. 

In any case, I’m very glad to have gotten to it, since the voice has wonderful flow and a good balance between economy and description. It’s atmospheric, important, and adept at communicating historical information while not being entirely beholden to it. 

Of course, you can imagine it’s not an “easy” read and content warnings abound, particularly Sexual assault, which has multiple dimensions in this piece. But it is also capital a About the hard subject matter whenever it is introduced. 

I found this to be fantastic in every case, save for my reader kryptonite: psychic distance in the perspective always felt a bit removed. Which I think is fairly necessary, considering the subject matter. But it did curiously feel pretty difficult to feel grounded in place and person, despite it being atmospheric and rich in textured prose.

Bergen Anders Nelson Eickhoff

This novel was what finally allowed me, after five months of pondering, to admit that I hate America, even though I will likely remain a citizen of this thoroughly messed-up country until the day I die. This novel is unforgiving in its condemning depiction of antebellum America with fantastic twists that reveal just how similar America of the present is to the America ruled by slavery. It's terrifying, and caused me to lose more than a few hours of sleep pondering its plot and implications.

However, this novel also reminded me of how I love the potential of Americans. Not all Americans, mind you, for many characters (particularly white) commit such terrible atrocities that it caused me pain to read about them and recognize that while portrayed as fiction, most of the story likely has a historical basis. However, the ability of Cora to survive, the hope of the abolitionists and runaway slaves that drives them to work for a future where they can do more than survive, and the determination of so many characters to give up everything just so they can live as free human beings prevents this book from falling into a nihilistic despair. The book throws out the weak hope that claims that America will fix itself because it's always improving, and instead emphasizes the mature hope that America only improves when and because the oppressed and oppressors alike will it to change. This novel shows that this process isn't easy, and involves incredible suffering, but can be done. And more than anything else, it takes slavery out of the pages of bland historical texts and forces the brutal experience of slavery into our faces regardless of race or creed, and forces us to acknowledge what this abominable practice did and continues to do to the human condition. For this reason alone, "The Underground Railroad" is an absolutely essential read.

Cindy Lieberman

What if there really was a physical railroad that ran underground, helping former slaves to freedom? That bit of magical realism is used to loosely connect descriptions of life in the various states, from plantation life (and death) to medical experimentation on black men and women without informed consent, to Friday night lynching festivals in the town squares. Horrific. And Jan 6th 2021 we saw southerners under the thrall of an authoritarian and delusional president storm the U.S. Capitol building, waving confederate flags and hanging nooses from scaffolding. Horrifying. What a short distance we’ve come in all these years. #BLM

The Underground Railroad

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