I came into this novel expecting a lot. I had heard Colson Whitehead talking about it on Fresh Air and I had read reviews of it as well. I had high expectations but also was dreading it a bit since much like watching 12 Years a Slave, it’s hard to know what to say or do in the face of such inhumanity masquerading as “natural” and “necessary.” Still, I think this is an important novel to read and “not be able to digest” because I had echoes of it in my head last night as I watched the second presidential debate, where no questions about race relations were asked, even though the debate took place in St. Louis.
By now, most folks know the general outline of the book. It follows the journey of a slave woman, Cora, living on a plantation in Georgia whose decision to run away leads her to the Underground Railroad. Only in this alternative United States, the Underground Railroad is actually a railroad traveling in tunnels carved deep into the earth. Also, the states that Cora ends up traveling through are different than they were in our history—though each carries echoes of that history. The most horrific, and that’s saying a lot in this book, is North Carolina, where the state’s answer to the slave problem is to remove all people of color from the state. Those who remain but are caught or those who are traveling through and are caught are ritually murdered in a weekly “festival.” In North Carolina, Cora hides, Anne Frank-style, in the attic of an older couple.
The most powerful thing in this book are not the horrors that Whitehead creates mixing history and imagination but the character of Cora, a woman who keeps fighting for freedom and a life for herself. Throughout the novel, she is relentlessly pursued by a mercenary slave catcher, Ridgeway, who is still smarting from the fact that he was never able to catch Cora’s mother, Mabel, who escaped when Cora was a child.
This was not a fun book to read though I couldn’t put it down. Still, the unease and tension I felt as a reader is nothing compared to the real emotions experienced by generations of people held captive by a system that viewed and treated them as less than human. I really can’t wrap my head around that, but this book pushes me to try.