The Underground Railroad in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 05, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: pulitzer-winner, lotsa-buzz, only-reading-because-of-the-buzz, literary-schmiterary, historical-fiction, alternate-planes-and-histories, era-early-mid-1800s, national-book-award-winners, 100-best-of-21st-c

She let the farm convince her the world is other than what it will always be.

I was surprised by how much I liked this. I had read Zone One and thought it was good but not great, and I usually don't like Oprah picks, and the reviews for this book on FR are mixed, and the subject matter sounded pretty depressing .... but my Goodreads group chose it for the February read, and my hold came in at the library, and I sat down just to read the first few pages, and holy cow I didn't want to put it do

She let the farm convince her the world is other than what it will always be.

I was surprised by how much I liked this. I had read Zone One and thought it was good but not great, and I usually don't like Oprah picks, and the reviews for this book on FR are mixed, and the subject matter sounded pretty depressing .... but my Goodreads group chose it for the February read, and my hold came in at the library, and I sat down just to read the first few pages, and holy cow I didn't want to put it down. Whitehead's slightly emotionless style, which bugged me in Zone One, is perfect here. The only way to get through these atrocities is with the Emotion Meter turned way way down.

I'm not really sure if it's okay to say I "liked" it, or it was "great" - because can you say that about books that include rather vivid descriptions of atrocities and torture? I wanted to keep reading it, I wanted to know what happened to Cora next. I could barely stand to put it down. It was riveting, in the best and worst ways.

After I finished this, I had to set it down and think for a while, to figure out what it was I had just read. I ended up adding it to my "alternate planes and histories" shelf, because I think this is more of an alternate history than a real history. The atrocities happened, the runaway slave advertisements were real, but the rest of it is just slightly skewed. (The most obvious example: there was not an actual underground railroad, as there is in this book. But that's not the only difference, it's just the one that people seem to notice first. The descriptions of the country in this book are not historically accurate, but they feel accurate, because each situation did happen, in another way. (view spoiler) As Whitehead puts it: "each state is a different state of American possibility. ... And each time our protagonist gets out of the station in a new place, we sort of rebooted America in a different sort of way." you can read the rest of his interview here: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/06/4889698...) That off-kilter nature of the story keeps you just a little more uncomfortable than you might otherwise have been, and that really added to the reading experience for me. This is not a history book!

This book is about power. It’s about the power of words, to create a world for the reader. It’s about the power in learning how to read. It’s about the power that some people wrongly hold over other people. It’s about the power of a group of people acting together, and the power of a group of people acting against each other. It’s about the power of truth, and fable, and falsehoods; the power that a falsehood can hold, believing it to be true all your life, and how that affects your actions (or doesn’t affect your actions). And it’s about the power of the hidden truth that you never learn. And this book is about the power of the reader, to interpret things as she will, not necessarily as the writer intended. Each meaning is the true meaning.

Cora kicked Ridgeway in the face three times with her new wooden shoes. She thought, If the world will not stir itself to punish the wicked. No one stopped her. Later she said it was three kicks for three murders … But that was not the truth of it. It was all for her.

And this book is about inevitability. The inevitability of life is that it just keeps coming, every day, until it stops, and you never know what’s around the corner. Most days are just like every other day, until one day is not, and you don’t know, you can’t see it coming. And sometimes there is power in never giving up, in never accepting the inevitability of your circumstances, even if maybe you can never change them. Sometimes there is no power at all.

In life some people will betray you, and some people will help you, and most people will be indifferent to you. And you can’t always tell who is who, not even after it happens. ...more

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Jun 27, 2020 superawesomekt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature, historical-fiction, pulitzer, journeys-and-personal-odysseys, ehrtbm-challenge

I stayed up way too late last night reading the bulk of this worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize. One of those times when you know your brain won't stop thinking about it even if you stop turning the pages.

The novel starts off with excellent writing and continues with compelling tangents into individual archetypal narratives, but it's all centered around Cora and her escape from the Randall plantation in Georgia.

Not far into the novel, when Cora clambers onto a literal subterranean railroad, wa ...more

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Nov 14, 2016 Ryan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: borrowed, 2016, pulitzer

Astounding...and in many ways, it feels summed up best with this:

America 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... ...more

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Mar 13, 2017 alana rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, ebook, alternate-history, historical-fiction, oprah-book-club

hard to read but not. this mix of reimagining the underground railroad and aspects of history while also vividly weaving in research left me questioning my own understanding of the time period, specifically life after slavery in American history.

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