My favorite quote (among many) from this book: "The white men who wrote [the Declaration of Independence with its phrase 'all men created equal'] didn't understand it...if 'all men' did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom."
Eadie B. (eadieburke) -
This is Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning rendition of the Underground Railroad. It follows Cora, a young slave's adventures as she seeks freedom in the antebellum South. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad and they flee together. Whitehead's conception of the Underground Railroad is more part fact and part fiction. It is a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. The first stop is South Carolina but Ridgeway, the slave catcher, is close on their heels and they are forced to flee again. We get to follow Cora from state to state and experience the terrors of the black people in the pre-Civil War era. It is a tragic, heartbreaking view of how the slaves were brutally treated by the plantation owners. On the other hand, there were very good people along the real underground railroad who risked their lives in order to help the slaves escape to the north. This was my 7th Whitehead book and his writing gets better and better with each book. If you enjoy alternative reality books then I think this book would be for you.
