Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. When speaking of Valentine’s Farm, Cora explains “Even if the adults were free of the shackles that held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. What are your impressions of John Valentine’s vision for the farm?Ĩ. How does Ethel’s backstory, her relationship with slavery and Cora’s use of her home affect you?ħ. “The treasure, of course, was the underground railroad… Some might call freedom the dearest currency of all.” How does this quote shape the story for you?Ħ. What role do you think stories play for Cora and other travelers using the underground railroad?ĥ. Cora constructs elaborate daydreams about her life as a free woman and dedicates herself to reading and expanding her education. How do Cora’s challenges in North Carolina mirror what America is still struggling with today?Ĥ. In North Carolina, institutions like doctor’s offices and museums that were supposed to help ‘black uplift’ were corrupt and unethical. The scenes on Randall’s plantation are horrific-how did the writing affect you as a reader?ģ. How does the depiction of slavery in The Underground Railroad compare to other depictions in literature and film?Ģ. This is a luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself.”-Alex Preston, The Guardianġ. “I haven’t been as simultaneously moved and entertained bya book for many years. “Perfectly balances the realism of its subject with fabulist touches that render it freshly illuminating.” - Time “Whitehead’s novel unflinchingly turns our attention to the foundations of the America we know now.” - Elle A successful amalgam: a realistically imagined slave narrative and a crafty allegory a tense adventure tale and a meditation on America’s defining values.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune offers many testaments to Whitehead’s considerable talents and examines a deeply relevant and disturbing period of American history.”- The Christian Science Monitor “Whitehead is a writer of extraordinary stylistic powers. It is a book for now it is a book that is necessary.” - BuzzFeed The Underground Railroad is a book both timeless and timely. You’ll be shaken and stunned by Whitehead’s imaginative brilliance. An instant classic that makes vivid the darkest, most horrific corners of America’s history of brutality against black people.” - HuffPost One of the finest novels written aboutour country’s still unabsolved original sin.” - USA Today “ is the best living American novelist.”- Chicago Tribune A wonderful reminder of whatgreat literature is supposed to do: open our eyes, challengeus, and leave us changed by the end.” - Esquire “ The Underground Railroad enters the pantheon of. Whathe comes up with is an American masterpiece.”-Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto “Colson Whitehead’s book blends the fanciful and the horrific, the deeply emotional and the coolly intellectual. “A brilliant reimagining of antebellum America.”- The New Republic A stirring exploration of the American experiment.” - The Wall Street Journal “The Underground Railroad is inquiring into the very soul of American democracy. Tense, graphic, uplifting and informed, this is a story to share and remember.” - People “Whitehead's best work and an important American novel.” - The Boston Globe Essential.” -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Stunningly daring.” - The New York Times Book Review Praise For The Underground Railroad: A Novel… Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle! The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage-and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.Īs Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood-where greater pain awaits. The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins.Ĭora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this #1 New York Times bestseller chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.
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