As Cora runs, a slave tracker, Ridgeway, stalks her on horseback, chains ready for her body. The reader can’t help but draw comparisons to the iterations of modern American racism, covered daily in the “official” news and on Twitter and YouTube. Each stop on the railroad – South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee – represents what Whitehead calls in the Oprah interview, “another American possibility.” Each of these – even those that seem innocuous enough – is violent and insidious in its own way. She relies on the Underground Railroad, in this case an actual subway car and series of tunnels buried deep in the poisoned and bloody earth, to inch her way toward liberty. This is the story of Cora, a slave on the Randall Plantation in Georgia, who steals off toward freedom, as her mother did before her. From Charles Dickens to Jane Hamilton, a lot of my favorites are on her list. So, Oprah’s endorsement ( “It took my breath away,” she told Whitehead), and Pamela Paul’s extended interview with the author on the New York Times Book Review podcast, had me rushing to experience this book. You probably know that Oprah Winfrey picked The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead for her book club in September. For some readers, Oprah’s attention is a deterrent, but not for me.
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