The Underground Railroad

It was her grandmother talking that Sunday evening when Caesar approached Cora about the underground railroad, and she said no.

Three weeks later she said yes.

This time it was her mother talking.

I hadn't read Colson Whitehead before, so I didn't know anything about his Sci Fi/Fantasy writing roots before learning about  The Underground Railroad; and it would seem that everyone is cautioning to interpret this book through Whitehead's usual oeuvre. This book has proved controversial within the Goodreads community – with thoughtful reviews outlining its flaws, which have in turn attracted emotional rebuttals from its supporters – and if it hadn't been longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, I wouldn't have bothered picking it up. I think it's important to note that I went into this book understanding the controversy, primed to accept the experience on its own terms, and I leave it more or less satisfied: if being neither annoyed nor delighted by a book equals “satisfied”. I don't see it winning the Booker, but it's probably always timely to read about race relations and the lingering effects of slavery in America.

The Underground Railroad begins around the turn of the nineteenth century, on a Georgia cotton plantation. Caesar – a young man recently sold down the river from his comfortable Virginia home – has been quietly plotting an escape. When he asks Cora – a “stray” who occupies the bottom rung of the social ladder even among her fellow slaves – to accompany him, she balks. But when circumstances on their plantation threaten to become even more dangerous, Cora decides to throw her lot in with Caesar; they go on the run. This book enters the realm of Fantasy when Caesar leads Cora to a literal “underground” railway station, with the station masters being those allies who would help runaways, unusual conductors driving the engines at high speed through dark tunnels, and passenger accommodations ranging from a flatbed to a proper coach. The pair is warned from the start that every state they might end up in has its own ideas of interracial relations, and that it's a crap-shoot where they might debark. Anxious to get away, Caesar and Cora blindly take the first train that comes along.

From here, the storyline conjures Gulliver's Travels(helpfully namedropped in the narrative): Everywhere Cora ends up (South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana) is a warped version of American history. And while none of these places existed as written, each is intended to reference actual events and give the essence of the African-American experience up to today. In an interview, Whitehead states:

I didn’t see any particular value in doing a straight historical novel. The use of certain fantastical elements was just a different way to tell a story. If I stuck to the facts then I couldn’t bring in the Holocaust, and the KKK, and eugenic experiments. I was able to achieve a different effect by altering history...More than anything, the book is a comment on history. I take too many liberties to say it’s a document. Being able to play with time and different historical episodes allows me to, hopefully, tell a different story of America than the one it tells itself.

And that's the controversy: Does Whitehead honour history and the actual experience of slaves when he takes “too many liberties” with the truth? It puts me in mind of the mild controversy surrounding the current blockbuster film Dunkirk: Apparently, director Christopher Nolan didn't want to “get political” in recounting this real-life WWII event, so in order to focus solely on the experience of the soldiers on the ground, he intentionally didn't bring in anything about Churchill or Hitler or what was at stake; as though a historical film can be completely divorced from its historical moment. In a way, that's also what Whitehead is doing in The Underground Railroad: trying to evoke the experience separate from the facts. An article in The New Yorker makes the case that not enough has been written about the actual Underground Railroad (other than misinformation about the supposed freedom to be found in the northern states and a general "white"washing of the heroes), and as a result, most Americans don't know enough about their own true history. This book won't solve that problem.

As for the actual story: The beginning section on the plantation felt 100% believable, right down to the banality of evil as a group of slave-owning picnickers enjoy the view of a runaway's gruesome torture while they sip their tea. History is brought in with the story of Cora's grandmother's capture in Africa, and from various perspectives, the horrific living conditions for the slaves is detailed. Because I was expecting it, I wasn't turned off at the appearance of an actual railroad under the earth, and a tale of escape is inherently interesting; and especially when a tenacious slave-catcher is always one step behind. I don't know if I bought that an unschooled teenager would be capable of the rhetoric, but I did appreciate that Cora was given the space to philosophise:

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand.

And I think the point of the whole thing (what ties the historical moment to the world of today) is to be found in this speech by a freeborn Black abolitionist:

We can't save everyone. But that doesn't mean we can't try. Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing's going to grow in this mean cold, but we can have flowers.

Here's one delusion: that we can escape slavery. We can't. Its scars will never fade. When you saw your mother sold off, your father beaten, your sister abused by some boss or master, did you ever think you would sit here today, without chains, without the yoke, among a new family? Everything you ever knew told you that freedom was a trick – yet here you are. Still we run, tracking by a full moon to sanctuary.

Valentine farm is a delusion. Who told you the negro deserved a place of refuge? Who told you that you had that right? Every minute of your life's suffering has argued otherwise. By every fact of history, it can't exist. This place must be a delusion, too. Yet here we are.

And America, too, 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.

Yes, here we are. The Underground Railroad has won a stack of awards (and the nod from Oprah), so plenty of readers have found value in it. I thought it was fine. I don't imagine it will win the Man Booker this year – and especially since the prize was won last year by The Sellout; a book that did a masterful job of satirising America's race relations. I would be interested in reading Whitehead again.

The Man Booker 2017 Longlist: 

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster 
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry 
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund 
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid 
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack 
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor 
Elmet by Fiona Mozley 
The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy 
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 
Autumn by Ali Smith 
Swing Time by Zadie Smith 
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

Eventually won by Lincoln in the Bardo, I would have given the Booker this year to Days Without End. My ranking, based solely on my own reading enjoyment, of the shortlist is:

Autumn

Exit West

Lincoln in the Bardo

Elmet

4321

History of Wolves