The History Book Club discussion

This is the glossary thread for the September BOTM selection - The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.

This is a "spoiler thread" so expansive discussions can take place on any aspect of the book.

No self promotion or spam allowed.

by Colson Whitehead

There are articles/videos/interviews etc. which deal with this book that I am setting up a thread to add any of these items to.

Please feel free to add your own. If you cite any book or author aside from the book being discussed - you have to add the proper citation, book cover, author's photo and author's link.

This way the adds will not be disruptive to the non spoiler conversation. And you can discuss any and all of these without spoiler html because this is not the book discussion thread nor a non spoiler thread. Setting up this spoiler thread for this book will also not clutter up the book discussion thread.

National Book Award for Fiction (Historical Fiction)

http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2016wi...

The Underground Railroad:


The Underground Railroad, painting by Charles T. Webber

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid 19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.

The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives. Various other routes led to Mexico or overseas.

An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until shortly after the American Revolution. However, the network now generally known as the Underground Railroad was formed in the late 1700s, and reached its height between 1850 and 1860. One estimate suggests that by 1850, 100,000 slaves had escaped via the "Railroad".

British North America (present-day Canada), where slavery was prohibited, was a popular destination, as its long border gave many points of access. Most former slaves settled in Ontario. More than 30,000 people were said to have escaped there via the network during its 20-year peak period, although U.S. Census figures account for only 6,000. Numerous fugitives' stories are documented in the 1872 book The Underground Railroad Records by William Still, an abolitionist who then headed the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.

Remainder of article:

Source: Wikipedia

In Colson Whitehead’s Latest, the Underground Railroad Is More Than a Metaphor
By JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ
AUG. 5, 2016


Sophy Hollington

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/bo...

Source: New York Times

The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad
Hardly anyone used it, but it provides us with moral comfort—and white heroes.

By Kathryn Schulz


Stories of the Underground Railroad provide the possibility of moral comfort in a profoundly uncomfortable past. Illustration by Leigh Guldig

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Source: The New Yorker Magazine

Underground - TV Series on the events of the Underground Railroad - TV series

http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/underg...

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 1 of 9)
https://youtu.be/pWq8RSUXXf4

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 2 of 9)
https://youtu.be/-5EyXG5Vrmk

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 3 of 9)
https://youtu.be/XNgk9f-vNow

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 4 of 9)
https://youtu.be/jxvn-j7KyfY

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 5 of 9)
https://youtu.be/jXZBQFJzKas

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 6 of 9)
https://youtu.be/VRjFwC7ahUU

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 7 of 9)
https://youtu.be/KYhNy2Ux_xw

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 8 of 9)
https://youtu.be/SVIDS5emSRY

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Part 9 of 9)
https://youtu.be/DNzIoXrGgTg

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Tubman & the Underground Railroad {Part 1}
https://youtu.be/F54jtNaBK2E

Harriet Tubman & the Underground Railroad {Part 2}
https://youtu.be/iaBKXsygMv8

Race to Freedom The Underground Railroad 1994 Full Movie

https://youtu.be/xqd9s34hDQg

Source: Youtube

Link is to a woodcut of an open air slave auction on the street north of the Exchange building in Charleston, SC, where Cora's grandmother was sold. The slaves in the painting are not pictured nude, but according to Colson's book, Chapter One, "Ajarry", p. 5, that's how it would have been.

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townn...

http://greatmuseums.org/explore/more/...

Could this be the "Museum of Natural Wonders"?

I've finished this book a while ago but not fully understanding the part with Tennessee and the last part when Cora finally escaped. Can someone explain please.

What about Tennessee, specifically? The landscape I understand to be the result of a wildfire or an accident. What I don't understand is why they didn't kill the SOB Ridgeway when they had the chance. Especially Cora, as her hands were already dirty so what difference would it make to her?

As for the end, I don't know, I think it's supposed to be a bit mysterious. Do we know who the man is with the familiar eyes and horseshoe brand? Or is it just that we know his story--that she knows, too. The tortures may be a little different, but the absurdity of their life in bondage is the same, and it is time to leave it behind, finally. That's my take.

The last chapter was "The North", and Cora was in a wagon headed to St Louis. Missouri was a slave state so she still didn't seem very safe. The Mississippi River was part of the Underground Railroad, and many African-Americans worked on the boats. I wondered if the author was hinting that Cora would be heading up North via the river, or if she would cross the river into Illinois. Cora seemed to feel that she could trust the older man, and saw that he was a former slave.

I also thought "The North" was a misnomer.

I also read "The North" as Cora finally making her way there, but not immediately. I think that it was a way for the author to show another facet of the Underground Railroad, albeit subtlety.

I've finished the book via the audiobook. The reader was superb if anyone is wondering.

I have been thinking about the Underground Railroad part of it being a literal Railroad. I think it's pretty central to the message of the book. First, the fact that no one knew or said how it was built. I wonder if that is to be a way of illustrating how the historical Railroad was such an amalgam of people heroically resisting.

Second, the way it took characters to sometimes better, sometimes worse conditions felt a bit like showing the reality of the life of slaves and free persons in that time.

Are there other ways people felt the Railroad was allegorical?

I did, J.w. I found that the RR was similar to life in that it's a journey. Once it begins, the rider doesn't know where it's headed. I remember the first time that Cora took the train, her journey could go one of two ways and that one way would be better than the other. It reminded me of having one path, the path of least resistance to her journey to become free.

Jeff wrote: "What about Tennessee, specifically? The landscape I understand to be the result of a wildfire or an accident. What I don't understand is why they didn't kill the SOB Ridgeway when they had the chan..."

I was wondering what Tennessee represented in the African American history? Every state before seemed to represent some aspect of discrimination. This last few chapters were the least clear.
For the last chapter, I was reminded to read another book which looks at migration to the north and including the West Coast. The book is by Isabel Wilkerson.

June, I read that book and I highly recommend it. It explains the next chapter in post-civil war history very well.

I just finished and hadn't been able to log in here previously. I had had mild interest but seeing this group read it gave me the incentive to read it.

I had been a little skeptical of the literal premise of the book, but it absolutely worked along with the structure.

I'm not sure if this correct, but my interpretation of this from a historical perspective is that it is more than just historical fiction, but sort of a revisionist history experiment. I could never place it exactly in time, if it is even intended to be, but from real people and events mentioned assume it was mid-1800s. (A child is mentioned later living but old during the "Great War," which I assume is WWI. Thomas Jefferson is referenced, but not Lincoln.) I ended up deciding that it was a world where the Civil War never happened, no Lincoln, no Emancipation, etc. But a "what if the country as a whole continued on with the free/slave split into the future?" The different states represented different scenarios for how the relations between races could have developed. Maybe it's a progression through time, with each location/scenario being a reaction to the previous one. Or maybe it represents different regional approaches based on economic and other factors. But there seemed to be a flow to the narrative. Of course, it was not an optimistic conclusion and you wonder where it went from there. Would it end up in the same place we are today that we got to through the War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, etc etc.? He is certainly not making that point, but I take it that the alternatives starting from the antebellum period aren't better.

I like your thinking, James. Sounds like grounds for a sequel.

Of course the alternatives in this book are not better, and never could be, because slavery still exists. You hope there are better opportunities to escape to north and west, but you can't be too optimistic at the end since no matter how far she traveled in the book, the horrors of slavery kept catching up.

Wow, James,: you can't be too optimistic at the end since no matter how far she traveled in the book, the horrors of slavery kept catching up

I did not find the ending optimistic as some others have done (I've discussed it with another group as well). That sentence grounds my "gut feeling" in the book's reality.

Great discussion - this is the glossary thread though (smile) - but it is all good (smile)