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Oct 02, 2018Inga57 rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
This could have been a good book, until it wasn’t. The first five chapters had my attention, then came North Carolina were the story fell apart. See, the book is fiction, giving the author free reign to write as he pleases; which the judges for the ‘National Book Awards’ as well as the judges for the ‘Pulitzer’ came to an agreement in 2016 and 2017, respectively, giving Colson Whitehead their highest honors, undeterred by obvious blunders. Example: Cora, the main character, is a runaway slave. Martin, a white man, finds her in a closed section of the underground railroad and takes her home with him where he and his wife keep her hidden in their North Carolina attic. Martin makes nightly visits to Cora to explain ‘his predicament’ by hiding her in their home with lengthy explanations of the ‘immigration of white people, disappearance of black people, unpleasantries explained in newspapers, etc.’ This is where the book begins to crumble for me. It felt forced, an awkward way to include the details of a time. Honestly, I could never see a southern white man from 1850’s -or- from Colson’s book, go into such detail with a slave. Martin’s attic seemed ‘conveniently’ inventoried by abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets for Cora’s reading, along with almanac’s and a Bible. In Georgia, it is written that ‘The Southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.’ By the time we reach Tennessee, Ridgeway, a slave catcher, buys Cora a dress, takes her out to supper, and begins to spill his guts, calling it ‘catch-each-other-up’ explaining the likes of ‘Manifest Destiny’ while Cora remains in chains. Her response? ‘I got to go to the toilet.’ At the Valentine Farm in Indiana, the free-black and runaway slaves gather to hear a man of mixed race speak. He tells them, “In some ways, the only thing we have in common is the color of your skin. Our ancestors came from all over the African continent. It’s quite large. They had different ways of subsistence, different customs, spoke a hundred different languages. And that great mixture was brought to America in the hold of slave ships. To the north, to the south. We are not one people but many different people, with a million desires and hopes and wishes for ourselves and our children.” And ‘THE GREAT WAR HAD ALWAYS BEEN BETWEEN THE WHITE AND THE BLACK. IT ALWAYS WOULD BE.’ Although the ending is abrupt, it couldn’t come soon enough for me. Considering the other big winners in 2016 for the National Book Awards, there was an obvious theme: ‘Race in America.’ Obviously, Colson Whitehead wrote Underground Railroad at the right time to be included with the other three selections: http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2016.h... If anyone would like to read an award-winning book about slavery and the underground railroad, I would recommend ‘The Good Lord Bird’ by James McBride © 2013. From the same year, ‘The Last Runaway’ by Tracy Chevalier.