Mary
asked
Colson Whitehead:
Was Valentine Farm based on a real place? ( Just finished UR and loved it...and The Intuitionist, and Sag Harbor, and John Henry Days...)
Colson Whitehead
Nothing actual, but it's nice to think such a place existed...and maybe it did! But I wanted refuge, and a stage for debates about black determination that were going on 150 years ago, and still go on.
More Answered Questions
Andy
asked
Colson Whitehead:
Hi! One of the subtle yet extremely powerful motifs in the novel is the invocation to look out the windows and see America. This is interesting in itself as well as in how rail travel reshaped aesthetics of landscape. Would you say a bit more about what those passage and/or that motif invoke for you now? I'm not necessarily asking for your intended meaning so much as what you might see in these passages now.
Laurel
asked
Colson Whitehead:
"She smiled at Chester, and Lovey and the women from her cabin, with brevity and efficiency. Like when you see the shadow of a bird on the ground but look up and nothing's there. She subsisted on rations, in everything." I had to close the book to think for a while, about not only how Caesar sees Cora, but how I do, how Ridgewaydoes, how every character does. Do you think about these perspectives when writing?
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