The Underground Railroad in this book is a physical thing, a tangible track to other places, different worlds for each stop yet all in their way treating black men and women as less than human. This is a novel about slavery and the runaway slave Cora in particular, but it is also imaginative and slightly mystical in the way it goes about telling the story, starting with that truly iron railroad.
The novel more or less is told in episodes, each corresponding to a new stop on the journey, after escaping Cora's cruel owner and plantation. Each stop, the two Carolinas, then Tennessee, then finally Indiana, has its own cruelties, its own peculiar way to demonstrate its dominance over the former slaves and free black people that landed there.
Some situations seemed benign, even supportive when Cora first arrived, like South Carolina. That warm welcome masked sinister medical procedures and experiments that Cora barely escaped. And North Carolina had no such veneer of kindness. That stop found Cora hidden above an attic, watching the weekly ritual of another lynching of a black person found in the area. Harrowing.
Throughout this book, which was nominally a historical novel, I found myself looking up details of events described in the book, only to find that there was something similar in history, just not quite the same. By not sticking strictly to the history, Whitehead in a way creates a whole new perspective on slavery, by adding what might have happened. It isn't quite the same, and this new interpretation seems completely fresh and new as a result.
We all had a very strong reaction to this book, particularly those raised in the south where the overhang of slavery was still strong. The extensive and willful cruelty, the shocking disregard of basic humanity were often hard to read and reminded us again that the effect of slavery was not just a loss of freedom. It was often living in hell.
That said, we generally loved it. It was extremely well written, imaginatively conceived and for all its weighty topics, easy to read. And it sparked off a very interesting and far ranging discussion of our own experiences and attitudes.
It doesn't get much better than that for a book.
Our next meeting will be on October 17 at 6:30pm at Catherine's house. Thank you Catherine! The book will be Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. See you all there!
