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The Underground Railroad / The Nickel Boys
The Nickel Boys, 9780385537070
The Underground Railroad, 9780345804327
Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railroad, 9780345804327
Colson Whitehead
- GenresFiction
560 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
12 people are currently reading
406 people want to read
About the author
Colson Whitehead
40 books18.9k followersCOLSON WHITEHEAD is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also won the National Book Award. A recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.
Harlem Shuffle is the first book in The Harlem Trilogy. The second, Crook Manifesto, will be published in 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 4, 2021
The Underground Railroad
Whitehead’s riveting novel immerses you in an adventure of survival unlike any other. Taking place in the antebellum south, the story focuses on Cora. Having reached the cusp of womanhood, she has been a slave on a large cotton plantation in Georgia. When she schemes with another slave named Caesar to flee the brutality of their daily lives, nothing can prepare them for the horrors that lie ahead. Whitehead confronts the inhumanity of slavery, and he shows us through the courage and resilience of Cora, Caesar, and a cast of other men and women in bondage that the human strength to survive can outlast even the most terrifying of circumstances.
As Cora sets out to attain her freedom, she finds help along the underground railroad. This route of travel can be reached from basements and cellars inside the cottages and barns of those risking their lives to assist runaways, or it can be found through the thick brush leading to caves in the countryside. The railroad constitutes no mere trail of waystations on the dangerous trek north to freedom. It is an actual train running through underground tunnels with rails stretching for hundreds of miles. The cleverness of Whitehead’s imagination couples with his rich and blistering details to produce a story that is both overwhelmingly real and yet fantastical in its reach and scope.
While showing the physical cruelties of life under slavery, Whitehead also addresses the brainwashing and manipulation that were instituted to distort the truth and perpetuate other unspeakable atrocities. The novel’s unsettling aspects are searing in their vividness, yet the heart-racing suspense bodes with the possibility of a hopeful outcome. Once Cora is distanced from the sickening reality of history, which Whitehead makes unforgettable, she has opportunity for a future. The Underground Railroad may break your heart, but it will leave you with the pieces if you want to put it back together.
The Nickel Boys
The Nickel Boys follows the life of Elwood Curtis, a Black teen with the optimism and passion to fulfill the words of self-dignity and justice echoing from Martin Luther King. When an injustice lands him at a reformatory school in Tallahassee called Nickel Academy, his life changes forever, just like every young man who passes through the school’s network of terror and barbarity. That is, if they survive. You can almost feel Whitehead’s urgency and indignation to confront the horrors at Nickel that Elwood and many others suffer, including Elwood’s friend, Turner. Written in commanding prose with details both vivid and frightening, Whitehead delivers a tour de force with an unforgettable ending that will floor you with heartache, grace, and hope.
Taking in Elwood’s story and what happened to countless boys at the Nickel school of horrors had my heart racing the entire way, culminating with those remarkable ending chapters. They left me wondering if perhaps Whitehead had been imagining a coda as powerful as Morrison’s Beloved, where Paul D returns to care for a broken-spirited Sethe and tells her that she has a life worthy of dignity even after all she’d suffered. The ending of The Nickel Boys had me believing in the indomitable spirit of humanity and the power of literature to make us experience empathy on a level where I absorbed what Turner had chosen to do for Elwood with tears in my eyes.
Whitehead’s riveting novel immerses you in an adventure of survival unlike any other. Taking place in the antebellum south, the story focuses on Cora. Having reached the cusp of womanhood, she has been a slave on a large cotton plantation in Georgia. When she schemes with another slave named Caesar to flee the brutality of their daily lives, nothing can prepare them for the horrors that lie ahead. Whitehead confronts the inhumanity of slavery, and he shows us through the courage and resilience of Cora, Caesar, and a cast of other men and women in bondage that the human strength to survive can outlast even the most terrifying of circumstances.
As Cora sets out to attain her freedom, she finds help along the underground railroad. This route of travel can be reached from basements and cellars inside the cottages and barns of those risking their lives to assist runaways, or it can be found through the thick brush leading to caves in the countryside. The railroad constitutes no mere trail of waystations on the dangerous trek north to freedom. It is an actual train running through underground tunnels with rails stretching for hundreds of miles. The cleverness of Whitehead’s imagination couples with his rich and blistering details to produce a story that is both overwhelmingly real and yet fantastical in its reach and scope.
While showing the physical cruelties of life under slavery, Whitehead also addresses the brainwashing and manipulation that were instituted to distort the truth and perpetuate other unspeakable atrocities. The novel’s unsettling aspects are searing in their vividness, yet the heart-racing suspense bodes with the possibility of a hopeful outcome. Once Cora is distanced from the sickening reality of history, which Whitehead makes unforgettable, she has opportunity for a future. The Underground Railroad may break your heart, but it will leave you with the pieces if you want to put it back together.
The Nickel Boys
The Nickel Boys follows the life of Elwood Curtis, a Black teen with the optimism and passion to fulfill the words of self-dignity and justice echoing from Martin Luther King. When an injustice lands him at a reformatory school in Tallahassee called Nickel Academy, his life changes forever, just like every young man who passes through the school’s network of terror and barbarity. That is, if they survive. You can almost feel Whitehead’s urgency and indignation to confront the horrors at Nickel that Elwood and many others suffer, including Elwood’s friend, Turner. Written in commanding prose with details both vivid and frightening, Whitehead delivers a tour de force with an unforgettable ending that will floor you with heartache, grace, and hope.
Taking in Elwood’s story and what happened to countless boys at the Nickel school of horrors had my heart racing the entire way, culminating with those remarkable ending chapters. They left me wondering if perhaps Whitehead had been imagining a coda as powerful as Morrison’s Beloved, where Paul D returns to care for a broken-spirited Sethe and tells her that she has a life worthy of dignity even after all she’d suffered. The ending of The Nickel Boys had me believing in the indomitable spirit of humanity and the power of literature to make us experience empathy on a level where I absorbed what Turner had chosen to do for Elwood with tears in my eyes.
June 3, 2020
The story was so sad that it's hard to read, BUT excellent. Great storytelling.
May 5, 2020
Loved both of these.
August 30, 2022
hopeful
July 3, 2023
Great fantasy that I wish was true.
July 23, 2025
Important reads for me. Beautifully written stories.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews