The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)

The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
Anchor
Fiction, Historical Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Cora was just a young girl on a Georgia cotton plantation when her mother Mabel disappeared into the night. Despite the dogs and the bounties and even the famed, feared slave catcher Arnold Ridgefield pursuing her, she vanished as if into thin air. Thus Cora was left to fend for herself against the overseer, the owners, and the other slaves. But it wasn't until the new-bought Caesar plots his escape and asks her to join him that Cora even begins to consider flight herself. Caesar has a contact with the Underground Railroad, the secret network of subterranean stations that whisk runaway slaves about the country... but while the Railroad can promise an escape, nobody in the whole of America can promise her freedom - especially after their flight leaves one white boy dead and none other than Ridgefield hot on their trail.

REVIEW: For a country whose founding documents declare that all men are created equal, America has done a terrible job of living up to that ideal even before said documents were written down. Indeed, much of the country seems to delight in creating new ways to dehumanize and disenfranchise the "Other", even when it harms themselves. In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead drags those failures of justice and equality and basic humanity out of the shadows where so many want to sweep them (when they aren't actively reveling in them; if recent events have taught us nothing else, it's that the same mindsets of the slavery era are alive and well even in the twenty-first century, and in a depressingly significant percentage of the population).
From the day her mother disappears, Cora struggles to survive in a world that does its level best to grind her down and bury her, caught in a system whose every aspect works to divide, degrade, dehumanize, and dismiss anyone who is not white enough, not wealthy enough, not inherently cold and cruel and greedy enough. There is little to no solidarity among those enslaved, even by the same sadistic masters; the system sees to that, too, as does a basic human tendency to tribalism and establishing pecking orders even in the meanest of circumstances (a tendency that is exploited to further weaken the enslaved, and which also fragments those who would see the barbaric practice abolished). Cora becomes an outsider, in no small part because of Mabel's abandonment, and it's her own burning hatred at the woman for leaving her behind that makes her initially refuse to even consider Caesar's offer. (That, and of course the grisly examples that the plantation owners make of those who flee.) It's almost to her own surprise that she finds that she can indeed be pushed to the point where even those astronomically high stakes (and astronomically low odds of success) aren't enough to keep her in the slave quarters... but, almost from the start, things start to go wrong, and keep going wrong. On the Railroad - here imagined, with a touch of surrealism, as a real underground network of rail lines and engines, with an ever-changing network of stations and managers - Cora finds herself in different states... but they all have their own traps and dangers, and all exact heavy tolls for survival. Meanwhile, Ridgefield refuses to give up the hunt, aided by a brutish assistant and by an enigmatic young former slave boy, Homer, who has a peculiar devotion to the single-minded hunter despite technically being free. In her journey, she encounters all manner of allies and enemies and more than one person who turns out to be a little of both. Some chapters delve into the backstories of these side characters, revealing just how far beyond the plantation and chains the effects of slavery spread, how pretty much every life and mind has been distorted by it in some way. Even those who have never owned a slave or been a slave are shaped by it, not just because so much of the country's history and economy hinged on chattel slavery but because society itself warps around it: even in the most idyllic of settings, the fear and uneasiness are never far beneath the surface (or beneath the layers of self-justification). Is true, lasting freedom ever possible in a country whose very foundations stand on the bones of slaves and every edifice bends to accommodate it in its many forms and mindsets? Even if it isn't, Cora cannot stop moving forward save by lying down to die, and for all the setbacks and tragedies she encounters, all the hope turned to so much smoke, she is not ready to do that yet.
This is, necessarily, a harrowing story of dehumanization, cruelty, dashed hopes, crushed futures, and even the lies one tells oneself to justify actions (or lack thereof), or rationalize harm as being for the greater good (or the will of a God whose grace conveniently aligns with one's own circumstances and desires). What light and beauty there is often glimmers cold and distant as the stars in the night sky, something seen and pursued that can never really be reached, especially not in a human lifespan. The ending feels a little unsettled and ambiguous, which I understand was probably the point but which still made me feel mildly let down.

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