By Colson Whitehead
A fairly abrupt gear shift for me to go from the halcyon carefree days of childhood adventuring in pre-WWII England (Swallows and Amazons) to the antebellum hell of runaway slaves.
This was the first book I borrowed for myself from the beautiful Mordecai Richler library (other than the bales of comics I’ve been signing out for the kid). I think it took me about 10 days to read the hardcover print of The Underground Railroad.
This was also the second book that I’ve read from my company’s book club, the first being Where the Crawdads Sing.
As you may recall, I had
discreetly called out the racial blind spot in the book club organizer in choosing a white-authored novel featuring a white protagonist thinking that it would amplify
BIPOC voices. I had also made the
suggestion that we try to avoid using Amazon for the next book. I don’t know how much I influenced the
organizers but their decision to go with The Underground Railroad and
present alternate options to acquire the book (Kindle, individual orders billed
to Cost Center, library loans) seemed like they were listening!
When I told Olman about the book choice, he of course proceeded to google the author and surprise! was immediately critical and exclaimed pedantically: the guy grew up in Manhattan, he went to a prestigious private school and his parents own an executive firm! He’s a total elite! And what’s worse, his full name is Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead! (I then read his Wikipedia entry which further discloses that he owns a home in the Hamptons)
Hey, I’m not saying that the
choice was super duper woke (I would have preferred a Canadian BIPOC author),
but choosing a novel about runaway plantation slaves from a black author was a
decent start. If you look at past book
choices, it’s fairly obvious that this was a pretty radical departure for the
AWM Book Club!
And if you read further on Whitehead, he seems very aware of his privilege. According to this Guardian article
His 2009 novel, Sag Harbor, detailed with humour the experience of being a kid in Manhattan’s private-school world, with a fancy summer home in the Hamptons. It was a position of privilege considered so unavailable to African Americans that the parents of white classmates would speculate about whether he and his brother were African princes.
“Bougie” is the word he uses to describe that world, which he went through a period of disparaging and attempting to distance himself from. “Posh,” he says, by way of translation. “Upscale; bourgeois values. The whole constellation of satisfied, complacent, et voilà.”
Now let’s finally get started on the actual content of The Underground Railroad, shall we? Due partly to my Canadian upbringing, my limited knowledge of the underground railroad was enough to make me question - was there really an actual railroad?? Because I thought the railroad was more of a metaphor for the underground network of safe houses and collaborators? Thus, I had to google to confirm that Whitehead used a literal underground railroad as a sort of alternate history device.
Our protagonist is a young slave named Cora, who was born on the Randall plantation in Georgia. The plantation is split in half between the two Randall brothers. Terrance is a tyrant with sadistic tendencies while James is distant and uninvolved. However, he tolerates his slaves having the occasional festivity. When Cora was around 10, her mother Mabel ran away because she was being repeatedly raped by slave boss, Moses. Mabel was never caught by the local slave catcher, Ridgeway, a rare failure which has always nagged at him over the years. Cora never forgave her mother for abandoning her. The beginning of the novel details life on the plantation when Cora is in her teens with the occasional flashbacks.
A few new slaves arrive at the plantation, including Caesar, who was taught how to read by his previous owner, Mrs Garner, a kindly widow from Virginia. I think because of Caesar’s skill set he can go to Georgia to pick up supplies. He meets Mr Fletcher, a white shopkeeper who tells Caesar about the underground railroad. Caesar recognizes Cora as a bit of an outcast on Randall, but bright and resilient. He asks her if she wants to run away with him, but she refuses, not believing his reasoning: that she is lucky because her mother successfully ran away.
When James dies of kidney failure, Terrance takes over the remaining half of the plantation. This prompts Big Anthony to run away but he gets caught by Ridgeway and brought back to Randall plantation. Terrance makes an horrific example of Big Anthony by burning him alive before some guests. These events prompts Cora to run away with Caesar. During their escape, Lovey catches up with them, which complicates things, including a run in with white farmers who try to capture them. They get Lovey while Cora is able to get away by injuring a teenaged boy, who later dies.
I realize I’m summarizing the novel, but it helps me in remembering what I had read. When I don’t do this, I find that I can barely recall certain events years later. Also, Cora’s journey through the American South is well-drawn by Whitehead and is a blend of surrealism, mystery and historical horror. Kind of like if Black Mirror did an episode of the Antebellum South. I also wanted to provide some context on the quotes that I want to include.
Cora and Caesar escape to South Carolina on an actual underground train. They befriend their contact Sam, who gives them new identities and convinces them to stick around his home town. Cora finds some solace working for a white family and living in a dorm with other black women. From the outside, their new home seemed like a progressive town meant to integrate former slaves into mainstream society.
But cracks start to appear in this so-called refuge. It starts with Cora being recommended by her dormitory proctor, Miss Lucy, to work at the Museum of Natural Wonders. At first, Cora thinks she’ll be working as a cleaner but it turns out her job is to pose as an ‘actor’ in exhibits about American history. Scenes from Darkest Africa. Life on the Slave Ship. Typical Day on the Plantation. Even though it’s ‘pretend’ she can’t escape slavery, except this time it included crowds of white people pressed up against glass windows.Cora’s criticism did not extend to Typical Day’s wardrobe, which was made of coarse, authentic negro cloth. She burned with shame twice a day when she stripped and got into her costume.
Then the new hospital gets built, complete with its own ‘colored wing’. When Cora sees Dr. Stevens for her ‘check-up’, he informs her: "South Carolina was in the midst of a large public health program.. to educate folks about a new surgical technique wherein the tubes inside a woman were severed to prevent the growth of a baby… The new hospital was specially equipped… The choice is yours, of course… but mandatory for some in the state…" (imbeciles, the mentally unfit, criminals)
The forced sterilization was brought up at our book club, as we were debating what was ‘real’ in terms of historical fact, or ‘made up’, like the literal underground railroad from the author’s imagination. I mentioned that forced sterilization was still practiced on First Nations women in Canada not that long ago. And here is another telling passage:
…The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiencynof the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib.
Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies—steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better.
As I write this particular sentence (I’ve been working on this review bit by bit over the course of weeks), I had spent Canada Day demonstrating with fellow citizens and First Nations and calling for justice for the children who died in our residential schools. The church and government knew that forcibly taking children away from their homes would destroy their people's future. It was their way of taking care of ‘the Indian problem’. They weren’t killing people outright, but still, for generations, Canada was as guilty of genocide as the Khmer Rouge or the Hutu government in Rwanda.
Eventually, Ridgeway and Homer, his shadow boy assistant, track down Caesar, but Cora is able to escape to North Carolina. If South Carolina had evil lurking behind the mask progressiveness, up North, the fear and hatred was exposed. There is even The Freedom Trail, an endless row of lynched black bodies, left rotting to warn black people against rebellion. This is another of Whitehead’s fantastical representation of unending violence inflicted on black people and the absolute moral vacuum of white supremacy. Cora ends up hiding in the attic of Martin, a sympathizer, and his devout wife, Ethel. In their town, anyone harbouring a slave will be executed.
Ridgeway captures Cora again, while Martin and Ethel meet a grim end. While journeying back to Georgia, Cora is rescued from Rideway by free black men and they bring her to a farm in Indiana populated by freed and fugitive slaves. There she finds temporary solace and is even to embark on a tentative romance with Royal, one of her rescuers. But the farm is raided and burned down by neighbouring whites, with Ridgeway infiltrating himself in the melee and he manages to recapture Cora after Royal is killed. He forces Cora to show her the underground railroad station and this time, Cora causes Ridgeway to make a fatal fall down the ladder. Cora once again continues on her journey (west to California or north towards Canada? I can’t remember), but it’s less hellish now that Ridgeway is dead – will she make it to freedom? That’s how it ends.
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Several few weeks later, I watched the Barry Jenkins series adaptation on Prime which debuted May 16. To be honest, I didn’t really like it and was a little disappointed in how it was adapted.
