imanisun 's review for:

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

4.0

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Slow going at first, I ultimately found this novel to meet most of my expectations. As someone who read a lot of fictionalized slave narratives as a child, mostly written as YA, it was interesting to read a non-YA slave narrative novel as an adult. In some ways, the experience was much different but in some ways the same. Whereas in YA books like Sharon Draper's Copper Sun or even Christopher Paul Curtis' Elijah of Buxton there are happier endings almost by default, there is no sense in Whitehead's book that he feels any responsibility to do that. And why would he? There's nothing happy about slavery. However, rather than write the text in a way that would allow non-Black audiences to bathe in the sadness of slavery, Whitehead engages with the topic both with a bluntness and what I argue is an almost casual magical realism. The Underground Railroad, in Whitehead's account (and Porsha Williams' https://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-atlanta/season-6/episode-8/videos/confused-by-the-underground-railroad) is an actual railroad that both has and does not have a terminus. And unlike in other texts involving the escapes of slaves, the ultimate destination does not appear to be necessarily Canada. During Cora's escape she encounters a number of supposed US states with different approaches to the Negro Problem. Whitehead plays with both space and time in that some of the states could easily pass for post-Reconstruction. In each place Cora finds herself, she both gains and loses something. But always there's a sense that ultimately she is glad for having left the planation and that's probably the common thread throughout slave narrative novels. One of the more interesting parts of the novel was the way Whitehead dealt with her interpersonal life. While relationships are there for Cora it's pretty clear that in some ways Whitehead is engaging in some kind of social death argument in that she is not allowed to keep any friends or romantic partners for very long, even in so-called freedom. This is perhaps the most poignant part of the novel. What was also fascinating, and perhaps it's why I gave it four stars, is the novel's relationship with hope. I don't mind if the novel is not hopeful. In fact, I think the novel may be too hopeful. If the Underground Railroad as it's written here is an extended metaphor for the fight towards liberation (and perhaps even democracy) then there's a chance that the novel is even rehabilitating the American project. The stakes of this, in our current times, are high.