The Underground Railroad

a novel

Hardcover, 306 pages

English language

Published Aug. 1, 2016 by Doubleday.

ISBN:
978-0-385-54236-4
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OCLC Number:
933420484
Goodreads:
30555488

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5 stars (2 reviews)

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, …

4 editions

The Underground Railroad

5 stars

I published this review on my blog in 2018:

This is an amazing book. The story depicted slavery in a much more brutal way than any other story I can recall reading. As I worked my way through the book, the terms, “white privilege” (a term I have struggled to understand) and “black lives matter” have played over and over again in my mind. I also think of “black holocaust”, a term I had only recently heard, yet as I read of Cora’s experiences and observations in North Carolina, shares so many similarities to the Jewish holocaust. Read more on my blog:

funfoodlife.com/the-underground-railroad/

Subjects

  • Fiction
  • Historical fiction
  • American fiction
  • Slavery