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. 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.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil 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 one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share. (Summary and pic from goodreads.com)
My Review: I
will, at some times in my life, be moving along and not really be aware—aware of
history, aware of events, aware of things that I should be aware of. I do a lot
of reading (or at least I try to) to expose myself to these things. Many times
I’m aware of what I’m reading about, and indeed I will often pick books that
involve something I’m interested in or a historical event I know something
about and would like to know more about. Sometimes, however, I am caught
completely off guard.
I
am not unaware of slavery nor the underground railroad, nor the atrocities that
these things brought to pass. I am aware of the racial struggles that continue
even today in a nation with a history such as ours (and not just American
history, BTW). But I think the thing I found most jarring about The Underground Railroad was just the
sheer day-to-day terrors and atrocities and almost hopelessness that afforded
slaves during this time.
The Underground
Railroad
is a book that combines historical fiction with a bit of a twist, that twist
(and I’m not giving anything away here, this can be read in the description of
the book) is that the underground railroad is an actual railroad with rail cars
and trains and engineers and such. While this does add a bit of a twist to history,
it doesn’t change what happened in the past and really just provides a
mechanism and easy metaphor for what each railway station (i.e. slavery and
attitudes of the residents towards those slaves) is like in the different
stations it stops. I found it to be a creative way to move the story along and
cover a lot of ground physically.
As
mentioned above, the violence in this book is really quite difficult. I will often
read while eating if I’m alone, and there were times that I couldn’t actually
read this book while eating because it was so disturbing. This almost never
happens, by the way. It is just so difficult to imagine people treating other
people the way that some of the slave owners treated their slaves. It was
horrible. I don’t enjoy reading about violence, and especially violence
inflicted on children or babies, but every once in awhile I force myself to
read a book that will bring reality back. I don’t go hunting for violence, but
I try to vary my historical fiction from things where people are falling in
love across time (which I don’t really read) to actual historical fiction, some
of which is not as rosy as others. I don’t want to be too careful or too
complacent in my day-to-day life. I want to remember what it took to get where
we are—not only so I can be grateful and keep perspective, but also be aware of
what could happen should not all be vigilant and continue moving towards more
justice, more love, more freedom, more understanding. I believe this is just
such a book—it will jar you out of your complacency and definitely be
uncomfortable at times. But I find it to be one of those books that is worth
the read, and a book that will force you to put yourself in the shoes of
another, not just to more fully understand their plight, but the plight of us
all.
My Rating: 4
Stars
For the
sensitive reader: There is violence in this book, but it is not gratuitous.
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