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A review by twellz
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
4.0
The Underground Railroad. It has been a few weeks since I finished this book & I can’t stop thinking about it. Walking alongside Cora, a young black slave, as she flees her master and searches for a safe place to live. This book will transport you to a time when “Freedom" was not what most people would think of it as being.
“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes—believes with all its heart—that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”
It made history accessible while leaving no doubt in anyone's mind how horrific slavery was. I liked Cora, an outcast slave, a critical thinker, and a risk taker. The brutality of Ridgeway (the slave bounty hunter) advanced the conflict, but many of the characters lacked depth. Although Whitehead portrays the Railroad as a Hogwarts Express with Station 9 & 3/4, the reality to some is that the non-physical Underground Railroad probably felt like a magical operation. Maybe if the author portrayed the real Underground Railroad, with the goodness of real people helping the slaves, the story wouldn’t have fallen so flat.
This book was a slow start & is hard to read as it jumped all over the place. But it’s message stays with you because, even today, it is still difficult to understand how our society could have been so cruel. However, white men have always considered themselves superior & entitled to whatever they want. In many ways I think we are still suffering the fallout from the Civil War; we continue to ignore the true cause of racial strife in this country while attempting to put bandaids on the symptoms. Cruelty is back in fashion these days, in speech, in social media and in government. Thanks for the digression, Trump.
“The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.”
“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes—believes with all its heart—that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”
It made history accessible while leaving no doubt in anyone's mind how horrific slavery was. I liked Cora, an outcast slave, a critical thinker, and a risk taker. The brutality of Ridgeway (the slave bounty hunter) advanced the conflict, but many of the characters lacked depth. Although Whitehead portrays the Railroad as a Hogwarts Express with Station 9 & 3/4, the reality to some is that the non-physical Underground Railroad probably felt like a magical operation. Maybe if the author portrayed the real Underground Railroad, with the goodness of real people helping the slaves, the story wouldn’t have fallen so flat.
This book was a slow start & is hard to read as it jumped all over the place. But it’s message stays with you because, even today, it is still difficult to understand how our society could have been so cruel. However, white men have always considered themselves superior & entitled to whatever they want. In many ways I think we are still suffering the fallout from the Civil War; we continue to ignore the true cause of racial strife in this country while attempting to put bandaids on the symptoms. Cruelty is back in fashion these days, in speech, in social media and in government. Thanks for the digression, Trump.
“The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.”