Adult Book Group Reads The Underground Railroad for October 4th & 6th
Coloson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is the chosen title for All Booked Up’s discussion on Wednesday, October 4th at 6:30PM or Friday, October 6th at 1:00PM. Copies of the book are available in the upper level “New” room.
About the Book
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in
Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora;
an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into
womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival
from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to
take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora
kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to
find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In
Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere
metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and
tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is
South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the
city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black
denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is
close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing
flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
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