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4.33 out of 5stars
(18 reviews)
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5.00 out of 5 stars review
Verified Purchaser
09/03/2016
tstan
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3.00 out of 5 stars review
Verified Purchaser
01/09/2017
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser10/28/2021This brand new book has gotten a lot…This brand new book has gotten a lot of buzz and deservedly so. [The Underground Railroad] follows Cora, a slave who runs away from a particularly cruel master, on her journey away from enslavement. She uses a literal underground railroad that takes her to several different stops. Each stop shows a different aspect of slavery and race relations, all ending in cruelty and suppression. Cora's journey is gruesome, particularly because there is nothing in this book that hasn't happened in one form or another. While I thought the format was interesting and the mixing of true history with this sort of science fiction-y element of a literal train and places that had real names (for example South Carolina) but that didn't reflect a true moment in time was ingenious, at the same time it held me at arms length from the book. I thought it would have been stronger if Whitehead could also have made Cora and some of the other characters into stronger, more whole characters. Instead, I felt that they were all vehicles for his point. I wanted to know Cora more deeply and I think almost got there, but not quite. Definitely worth a read, but maybe not as great as some of the talk around it has made it seem.japaul22
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3.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser10/04/2021I had to sit and ponder on this one.…I had to sit and ponder on this one. I truly didn't know how to feel after reading it. The subject matter was intriguing and tough yet the execution struggled a tad bit for me. This was my first book by Colson Whitehead. The premise of the book was a good one. It explored the harsh realities of not just slavery but of life for any black American during the colonial times. I will start off by saying that I loved me some Cora. She was a whippersnapper. So inspiring and so strong. No matter what happened to her (which was a lot) she never lost her drive. The book did a great job delving into the racial and class issues. I liked the interesting spin that he put on the railroad: in this novel, it was an actual train. Although I can say that may have taken some of the reality from the novel. My two qualms with this book were: the choppy chronology and the diction. As far as the chronology, the author would just jump to a different time and a different person all within a few sentences. I found myself having to re read and re listen to several passages because I was like "wait, what?" . Next, the diction. Let me preface by saying, I can tell that Mr. Whitehead is a very intelligent man. However, sometimes his word choice and descriptions would throw off the storytelling as the words that he chose or descriptions that he used were a bit too formal for the purpose of this text. For example, "The noxious air of the hold, the gloom of confinement, and the screams of those shackled to her contrived to drive Ajarry to madness." I just felt this was a moment that he could elaborate and really bring us into the world but instead it felt glossed over. And this happened often throughout the novel. Maybe it's a matter of personal preference but I felt that it minimized the story. Lastly, some people brought up the point of view and I would have to agree. I think that this novel would have much better been told from Cora's point of view rather than the 3rd person. It really didn't allow for much connection with the characters or development. He tried to develop the characters through back stories but they often interrupted the main plot and made the chronology even more choppy. Anywho..I say give it a try because it brought it some great discussion points. Didn't mean for it to be this long.1forthebooks
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser07/09/2021The Underground Railroad is a brutal…The Underground Railroad is a brutal and graphic account of slavery set before the Civil War. Cora is a runaway slave who leaves behind a miserable life on a cotton plantation in Georgia. In the book the underground railroad is a physical space where an underground train takes passengers from station to station. Cora travels by foot and by underground railroad zigzagging through South Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and finally to Michigan to find freedom.KatherineGregg
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser07/08/2021Wow. Wonderful. Magnificent. I have…Wow. Wonderful. Magnificent. I have never read an Oprah book club "assignment" that wasn't marvelous so I'm not surprised by the emotions this book gave me. Everyone should read this. Everyone Everybody. Will move the heart, spirit, soul and fill it with shame and wonder.Alphawoman
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser07/08/2021I don't know how to review this book.…I don't know how to review this book. It's the kind of story that makes you feel kicked in the gut, like someone threw you up in the air and pummeled you as if you were a pillow that needed to be shook, beat and thrown about. It's a story, a novel, but it's also not. There are thousands of Corys who were slaves and who are now buried underground, in swamps, in mass graves, with ropes around their necks and shackles around their ankles. Thousands of masters who were Randall, who carried around cat-o-nine tails and whips, who incessantly indulged their sadistic side, and are also buried underground. And thousands of slave catchers who were Ridgeway, with their haughty grins, full bellies and greedy appetites. Their names might have been different, their physical attributes may have been dissimilar, but their truths resound. This novel felt like nonfiction to me. Written starkly and without restraint. 5 stars for its impact and writing.homeschoolmimzi
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser07/08/2021Oof. Tough read, but very good.…Oof. Tough read, but very good. Listened to it on a road trip with my sister, who is very concerned that the book (and Amazon show) will make people think the Underground Railroad was an actual train underground. I...don't know what to make of this concern.ssperson
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser05/22/2021The Underground Railroad imagines a…The Underground Railroad imagines a world in which the Underground Railroad, the system used to smuggle slaves from the Southern slave states to the Northern free states, is an actual railroad. It follows a slave named Cora on her journey out of Georgia on the Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead has made each stop a real-life location with fictional attributes. For instance, South Carolina appears to be a virtual utopia for former slaves integrating into white society. However, something sinister lurks behind the scenes. Even though some things about the stops are fictional, they are still realistic and based in fact. Whitehead does not shy away from writing about the horrors of slavery and how slaves were treated. All of the primary characters in this book are richly developed and multi-faceted. There are no white savior or happy house-slave stereotypes. The Underground Railroad was my book club's November selection. We found much to discuss, including whether or not we would have had the courage to escape slavery. There's a lot of symbolism in this book and we talked about what our interpretations of it are. Since symbolism can go over my head at times, (it's my accountant brain!), I appreciated being able to hear what others thought of it. Colson Whitehead and this book have won many awards. It also made President Obama's 2016 Summer Reading List. Ah, to have a president who reads…But I digress…Whitehead has written several other books and they are each supposed to be quite different from one another. I plan on reading them at some point – I'm sure they're wonderful too. At any rate, I highly recommend The Underground Railroad for everyone.mcelhra
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3.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser05/12/2021I think Colson Whitehead is a great…I think Colson Whitehead is a great writer and I'd certainly read another book by this author. I had some issues with the whole set up of "The Underground Railroad" -- the idea that there was an actual underground railroad was kind of problematic to me.... and the book's more "imaginative" elements made it more difficult to accept the elements that aren't actually divorced from reality. That said Whitehead's characters are strong, varied and interesting. His depiction of the horrors of slavery are no doubt accurate and absolutely heart-wrenching.amerynth
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser05/14/20204.5 stars. Haunting, inventive, brutal. Might teach this in my AP English class one day. The story of slavery in America gets a dose of magical realism mixed with allegory, but the harsh reality of life as a slave is never far away. A powerful novel.ChristopherSwann
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser05/04/2020One of the best books I've read in a while, and one I am positive I'll be coming back to. Whitehead's careful pacing and slow reveal of how things work in this alternate timeline are handled beautifully.JBD1
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser04/21/2017I started this thinkin...I started this thinking the book was historical fiction. It took reading an interview to realize this book is more magical realism and related in tradition to "Gulliver's Travels". With that foundation, I began to appreciate all that the author was doing in this story of the horrors of slavery and race relations. The themes of freedom and what it means and the questions of humanity and survival are explored with all these great symbols and allegories. The story is hard to read in that so many awful things happen, and the characters are difficult to relate to, but that only serves to illustrate just what the author is saying.tjsjohanna
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4.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser01/25/2017To see chains on anot..."To see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own -- such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be any moment." I had read three of Colson Whitehead's previous books without much success: on upper-middle-class black life (uneven); on zombies (tedious); on poker (baffling). His writing often seemed too clever by half: long on gimmicks and surface style, and short on substance. I wasn't sure I was willing to give him another try. So, despite the awards and critical applause for THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, I approached it with some trepidation. So I was pleased to find it such an original and incendiary novel. The raw, unflinching power of his book took me by surprise. Before starting THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, I had recently read Drew Gilpin Faust's thoughtful study of death in the Civil War, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING. Her book isn't about slavery per se, but for obvious reasons it plays a part in her narrative. She quotes a letter to an abolitionist newspaper in 1864 from T. Strother: "To suppose that slavery, the accursed thing, could be abolished peacefully and laid aside innocently, after having plundered cradles, separated husbands and wives, parents and children; and after having starved to death, worked to death, whipped to death, run to death, burned to death, lied to death, kicked and cuffed to death, and grieved to death; and, worst of all, after having made prostitutes of a majority of the best women of a whole nation of people . . . would be the greatest ignorance under the sun." It was with thoughts like that already swirling around in my head that I began THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. I've read many books on American slavery, both history and fiction. Whitehead's depiction of the evil of that "accursed thing" is one of the most powerful I've read. We see the effect on slaves and slave-owners; fugitives and slave-catchers; free blacks and poor whites; Northerners and Southerners; abolitionists and apologists; heroes and cowards and villains. Character by character, and story by story, he shows us how slavery contaminated everyone and everything in this country. Reading Whitehead's novel makes it easy to understand radical abolitionism, and the rage and anger expressed in the letter quoted above: the evil and horrors of slavery must be ended, one way or another, even if it takes the evil and horrors of war to accomplish it. Perhaps we take that notion for granted now, but it was anything but consensus in mid-nineteenth-century America. So, yes, Whitehead's novel is very violent, sometimes shockingly so. But I think it's a necessary violence. There's real power in the hellish, almost surreal vision he's created. His book is at times like a terrifying Hieronymus Bosch painting: the stuff of nightmares. There's an angry "tear it all down" undertone to his book that I found very compelling. But the violence isn't sensationalized or played for cheap shock value. What makes it all so effective is his unsentimental approach. Whitehead writes about the most terrible things in a chilling and matter-of-fact manner, and that underscores the fact that extreme violence and sexual depravity were simply part of the fabric of slavery. He accepts the reality of the violence and evil, and he doesn't shy away from it. There is a brutal honesty in his depiction. I also admired Whitehead's creative alternate-history take on slavery. He imagines different paths slavery might have taken in various Southern states: from a pseudo-scientific social experiment in South Carolina to a nightmarish vision of pure hell in North Carolina. Come to think of it, maybe the "good intentions" and relative tranquility in South Carolina are even more terrifying in a sense. Each stop on Cora's journey is a bold and different set piece, with its own supporting cast, which forces us think about slavery in a new way. We're constantly pushed and challenged, and never allowed to become complacent as readers. Just when you think you know where things are headed. . . . Connecting those set pieces is the railroad itself. Whitehead's conceit of a physical railroad was one of the things about the novel that didn't really work for me. It felt, at best, like a convenient plot mechanism to quickly move the story along to each place he wanted to take us. It allows him to avoid dealing with the journey the slaves actually would have had to make in the real world, with all its trials and tribulations. Whitehead's vision of the underground path to the North is less about the journey and more about the stations along the way he wants to show us. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is not a perfect book. It's rough around the edges. As with his previous books, there's something about Whitehead's prose style that doesn't always agree with me. I often have to backtrack to figure out what he's actually trying to say. His jumps back and forth in time and space can be jarring. And there are other irritations and excesses. Whitehead's characters aren't always successful, other than Cora, who does emerge as a nuanced and memorable heroine who breathes life into the story at every turn. But perhaps I quibble. In the end, I think it all comes together into a coherent whole. And the cumulative effect is staggering. I won't be forgetting Cora's journey anytime soon. (Thanks to Doubleday for a complimentary copy. Receiving it did not affect the content of my review.)Wickabod
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser01/18/2017This is the 3rd novel ...This is the 3rd novel I have read by Colson Whitehead and the best. This book won the national book award for fiction and it is well deserved. Rather than seeing the underground railway for what it was, Whitehead portrays it as an actual railroad. This fantastical aspect of the book lends a creative air to a brutal story of slavery. We are never clear on the actual timeframe of the novel(1840??) or the accuracy of the events. This is not important because what Whitehead does is use his creative license to tell a true story about slavery and all of its brutality but do it in an interesting and creative way. The main character is Cora a teenage slave in Georgia who runs away using the railroad and follows a path through different states all the while being pursued by a slave catcher and the harshness of the white society of the south(and the north). Having just read Homegoing, I had an opportunity to compare 2 books that deal with the reality of slavery and not the sugar coated version we may have been fed growing up and reading history given to us by white people. As Whitehead has said in interviews. If you want to understand the Afro-American experience, you need to look no further than slavery. When you really look at it along with our treatment of Native Americans, you can see that we have a lot to answer for as to how this country was developed and what the "real" America is. This is a book that everyone should read.nivramkoorb
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3.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser01/09/2017My feelings on The Underground Railroad are so mixed that I've changed my rating several times, first from a mere three, then up to a four, and back to just three stars. With much to think about and, yet, much that felt lacking, I think I've settled on a rating that perhaps underrates Colson Whitehead's alternate history. Oh, yes. If you weren't aware, The Underground Railroad is an alternate history with something of a taste of magical realism, to boot. Cora is a slave on a Georgia plantation undergoing the transition from a benevolent master to his two less stable sons. After a visit to a slave gathering leaves Cora beaten by one of the sons, Cora jumps at an opportunity to escape the plantation and joins Caesar, a slave from Virginia more recently purchased by her master, as he escapes the plantation and with the help of a local white man escapes on the Underground Railroad. Which just happens to be a real railroad. Underground. It's around this point that I did a double take and realized that something was off. I'm no scholar of the slave-owning south, or even of the American Civil War (though I've enjoyed a few good books about the period, including Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels and the excellent Civil War anthology With My Face to the Enemy edited by Robert Cowley), but I am pretty sure that the Underground Railroad was more of a symbolic name for the network of safe houses and secret routes to the north to help escaping slaves than a real railroad, let alone an underground railroad. Colson's conceit is an America just a bit off from our own, with a railroad that is real, is underground, and where each stop is a new state with new parameters. As Cora moves north, each trip on the Underground Railroad takes her to a new state, and each state has its own version of what might have happened if history had taken a slightly--or significantly--different turn. I won't give spoilers, but each stop on Cora's journey seems calculated to flesh out another piece of the American story of slaves and the journey they faced, not just in antebellum America, but in the post-war world. Colson integrates some of the particularly pernicious repressions that only arose after slavery ended (including lynchings and disease testing on blacks) in a way that makes it as sinister as it was, reminding us that America's history with race is anything but blameless. Indeed, here's where I lean towards wanting to rate The Underground Railroad higher: we read the book as part of a book club and while we spent very little time discussing the actual book we did spend significant time discussing the issues of race in modern America. (The irony of a group of white men discussing race from the comfort of quiet and relatively homogenous Utah does not escape me. At one point, someone asked me a direct question about how I thought we could improve how we deal with race in our country and I was forced to admit that I had no idea. All I could offer is that we could probably start off with individual attitudes of humility and acceptance of others' differences, but otherwise--who am I to tell others how to solve their problems?) Brittany, my wife, read The Underground Railroad at the same time I did, and we found lots of opportunity to discuss the issues it raised, as well. (The book she next read was Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, which she insists I should read, as well, so I guess we're on a streak?) Any book that provokes discussion and reevaluation of perspectives is, in my humble opinion, worthy of some repute. But why only three stars and not four? I think the way the book fell short was in Whitehead's development of characters, especially Cora. Despite lots of opportunity for building sympathy and depth, Whitehead leaves her just out of reach, almost disconnected from the sometimes more sympathetic characters around her, a woman who often seems unwilling to allow herself to feel, and thereby gain a color that might endear her to the reader. Would I recommend The Underground Railroad? Probably, though not without reservation. It is not for everyone, but probably the right kind of literary fiction that will meet the guidelines of the bookclub-type reader.publiusdb
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser10/07/2016The Underground Railro...The Underground Railroad was just short-listed for the National Book Award--and boy, does it deserve it! Whitehead focuses mainly on the story of Cora, a slave born on a Georgia cotton plantation. He begins with a brief overview of her grandparents' kidnapping from Africa and her mother Mabel's escape, which occurred when Cora was only eight years old. Young Cora struggles to keep the tiny garden patch that her grandmother and mother handed down, but she soon finds herself living in Hob, the lodging for slave women rejected by the rest. The details of life on the Randall plantation, as witnessed by Cora, are as expected, horrific. Eventually, a slave named Caesar asks her to escape with him. When she later asks why he chose her, his answer is simple: "Because I knew that you could do it." The critics are all in wonderment over Whitehead's creation of a literal underground railroad--not just a secret network of safe homes, but an actual railroad built underground to carry runaway slaves to safer places. It's an interesting idea, but the real story, of course, is Cora's will to survive, along with the suffering both she and her helpers sustain. I admit that I'm no expert in the topic, so I'm not sure how much of Whitehead's depiction of the various states is based in fact. South Carolina, for example, was considered a progressive state in the novel because they provided cheap housing, literacy, and employment assistance for people of color; but they also pushed a program of sterilization onto young black women. North Carolina, according to Whitehead, "abolished" slavery by banishing blacks from the state, on pain of hanging, and by hiring cheap white labor to do the work of slaves; whites who harbored runaways were subject to the same punishment, carried out in public celebrations. Tennessee was a terrifying place running rampant with slave hunters. The relatively new state of Indiana was still in the throes of labor pains, unsure of how to handle large numbers of black settlers. I'm not going to reveal any more of the plot. Let me just say that Whitehead has created an indomitable and believable character in Cora, and her story will suck you in. If the fact that this book is an Oprah selection turns you off, just black out that big O on the front cover and keep reading. (Honestly, I don't get this snooty response, since many of her picks have been wonderful.) This one is a definite winner.Cariola
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser09/16/2016Whiteheads latest nov...Whitehead's latest novel has gotten a good deal of attention. For me, this was a solid historical novel about the challenges of escaping from slavery. But what set it apart was Cora, a richly developed character who illustrates the potential and limits of human agency. It was because I cared so much about Cora that I continued turning pages to follow her from stop to stop on the underground railroad.porch_reader
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser09/03/2016So very good- there's so much to digest with this book. The writing makes it a fast read, but it's so full and richly written. As Cora escapes from the Georgia plantation she was born on, she travels on the Underground Railroad, literally. She stops in different southern states, with varying degrees of racism that almost make the plantation look good. And that's all I can say without spoilers. Whitehead takes a topic that has been much discussed, and categorizes the history of racism, pointing out our ignorances and prejudices, while at the same time telling a great story. It really makes you think.tstan
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5.00 out of 5 stars reviewVerified Purchaser08/17/2016Sure to be one of the ...Sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year, the author is not shy at all throwing a bright light into one of the darkest corners of our history. There are times reading that are like driving by an accident where you don't want to look, but can't help yourself. Then after you don't know if you should cry, feel ashamed, or rage against the injustices committed well before your time. The sheer casualness of the violence and treatment of the slaves is horrifying. Through it all though we have Cora. She is the shining beacon we follow through the story. We feel her hopes and dreams of at first surviving her life on the plantation to can she find a better life in the free North. This book will stick with you for a long time.JJbooklvr