THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2017. This novel was not quite what I expected. It was an allegory using a real underground railroad (like a subway with real trains) as a metaphor for the real underground railroad which was of course "a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid 19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause." So why portray the railroad as an actual one? I read an interview Whitehead had with NPR. By using this device, he was able to put the protagonist, Cora, in "a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina - sort of like "Gulliver's Travels." The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state."
The book uses actual events in a fictionalized manner to show the plight of slaves trying to escape from their brutal hardships on the plantation. Plantation life is shown in all its horrors with one disturbing scene after another. In one instance, the master invites friends over to drink tea and lemonade as they watch a slave who tried to escape be tortured and burned! When Cora makes it to North Carolina, she is hidden in an attic for weeks and is witness to weekly lynchings in the town square. According to Whitehead, "That section in North Carolina was inspired by one of the more better-known slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl." And she was in North Carolina and fled her abusive master, who had sexual designs upon her, and hid seven years in an attic until she could be - get passage out of town. So Cora is trapped in an attic that overlooks the town park, and every Friday, there's a happy lynching festival where they execute the latest - the latest black person who's been caught up in their program of genocide." Then in South Carolina, Cora feels that she had found safe haven only to find out that the community built a hospital to experiment on blacks as a way to study syphilis and to try to sterilize them to control their population.
Overall, I thought this one was well worth reading but don't take it literally. It's more of an alternative history which uses real events to show the plight of the African American during the pre-civil war period and to show circumstances and prejudices that are still present in today's society.
The book uses actual events in a fictionalized manner to show the plight of slaves trying to escape from their brutal hardships on the plantation. Plantation life is shown in all its horrors with one disturbing scene after another. In one instance, the master invites friends over to drink tea and lemonade as they watch a slave who tried to escape be tortured and burned! When Cora makes it to North Carolina, she is hidden in an attic for weeks and is witness to weekly lynchings in the town square. According to Whitehead, "That section in North Carolina was inspired by one of the more better-known slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl." And she was in North Carolina and fled her abusive master, who had sexual designs upon her, and hid seven years in an attic until she could be - get passage out of town. So Cora is trapped in an attic that overlooks the town park, and every Friday, there's a happy lynching festival where they execute the latest - the latest black person who's been caught up in their program of genocide." Then in South Carolina, Cora feels that she had found safe haven only to find out that the community built a hospital to experiment on blacks as a way to study syphilis and to try to sterilize them to control their population.
Overall, I thought this one was well worth reading but don't take it literally. It's more of an alternative history which uses real events to show the plight of the African American during the pre-civil war period and to show circumstances and prejudices that are still present in today's society.
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