The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

South Carolina 

TW: Intense sexual abuse, intense racial violence and derogatory language

The Underground Railroad is an alternative historical novel that centers around the idea that the underground railroad was a literal railroad. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017. The story centers around an enslaved black woman named Cora that escapes from a plantation in Georgia. She endured countless abuses and hardships on the plantation including beatings and whippings, rape, inadequate/abusive living conditions, and the death of many people around her. After her escape, she moves from state to state to evade an overly-persistent slave catcher named Ridgeway. The book blurb talks about Gulliver’s Travels (which I haven’t read), and that each state is like a new world, similar to the Swift novel. 

The book was enjoyable. At no point did I have to try hard to read it. But, I’m not a fan of the general premise of the book. Making the underground railroad literally a railroad didn’t change the world enough to warrant writing this book. There were other aspects of the world Whitehead created that were too similar/believable to what actually happened, that it just created a lot of confusion. This is especially true at a time when the history of slavery isn’t taught well or consistently in our school systems. Slavery in America was bad enough, it doesn’t need to be exaggerated or changed in order to make a point. I worry that a lot of people will read this book thinking it’s historical fiction, rather than alternative history. 

I’m trying not to put spoilers in this review, but I’ll give an example of what I’m talking about from when Cora goes to South Carolina. As the old plantation owners die, there are fewer people wanting to farm and more people in the cities. This leads to an excess of formerly-enslaved people. The South Carolina government decided to solve this issue by buying many of the slaves from these plantation owners. They are assigned as factory workers, domestic workers, and more throughout the city. They are given dorms to live in, taught to read and write, and are given healthcare. And they are paid. Although they are not technically free, they live a mostly peaceful, autonomous life. I did a lot of research trying to figure out if this was a real practice (it was not). But it sounds realistic enough that this adds confusion around the topic of race and slavery in the United States. 

Characters are also not deeply expanded upon in this book. Some reviews I read said that they thought this novel would be better in first person to give us a more emotional experience. I didn’t mind the third person narrative, but I would have liked more discussion/expansion on the personalities of each character. This could have been a choice by the author to showcase that black people, especially during this time period, are not seen as individuals but as examples of their race. But it did take away some of my emotional response to the book. 

If someone said they were interested in this book, I would steer them towards The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019). That book is also an alternative history/magical realism retelling of the underground railroad, but I think Coates did a better job of showcasing what was real and what wasn’t. I also found his characters (including Harriet Tubman!) more compelling.

Review by the Numbers

Overall: 3/5

Writing: 4/5

Message: 2/5

Plot: 3/5

Character Development: 2/5

Challenges Satisfied

- South Carolina (Reading My Way Around the World Challenge)

- A Book with at Least Three POVs (2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge)

- A Book with a Tunnel (Shelf Reflection’s Disney Animated Movies Reading Challenge)