Whitehead's tale starts in Africa and arrives in America with Ajari (sorry, I listened so I have no idea how names are spelled). Ajari is the mother of Mabel, who is the mother of Cora, our central character. Cora, born into slavery on the Randall plantation in Georgia, is abandoned by Mabel when Cora is 10 years old. An outcast, she goes to live in a slave cabin with other outcasts - the lowest of the low of slave society.
After a particularly brutal encounter, and trust me, the entire description of slave life on Randall is brutal even if it's just a hum in the background it's always present - she is approached by Caesar, a new slave on the Randall plantation. Caesar wants Cora to join him in running away, as her mother did. Cora agrees. And so we are finally introduced to The Underground Railroad. Not a metaphor in this book, an actual collection of railways and engines under the soil and ready to take Cora and Caesar north.
The two fugitives head to South Carolina, which the railroad operator tells us has a more enlightened view towards colored advancement. In South Carolina, all the African Americans are owned by the government. They are given job placements and go to separate schools. In essence we have arrived in Jim Crowe times, where separate, but certainly not equal is the norm. Blacks are made to submit to recurring doctors visits where the medical staff offer sterilization to some, and mandate it to others. The medical staff also watches as a certain segment of the male black population descends further into syphilitic delirium. Is it better? Cora comes to understand that all of these efforts are just another form of slavery.
Cora is being chased by slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway, a blacksmith's son who found more power and status as a slave catcher than an honest trade. He makes it his mission to find Cora and return her to the Randall plantation and the particular cruelty of Terrence Randall. When Ridgeway appears in South Carolina, Cora goes on the move again, back to the tracks and on to North Carolina where the norm there is simply to eliminate all blacks from the state and any sympathetic whites. It's desolate and bleak and heartbreaking.
It seems like this journey will never end for Cora, that each stop offers a different set of indignities. I've read a few reviews that felt like Cora was never fully developed. I don't agree. Cora is the center of the story. The looking glass through which we see America to its fullest potential for evil. She takes us with her to each new degradation and somehow allows us to continue to hope that each next stop will be better even through the very end.
This book feels timely to me, as our national conversation for the past year has included such weighty topics as the Confederate flag, the building of the White House, and of course the all too frequent killing of unarmed black men and women by police. We can't afford to lose sight of where our country has come from if we really aim to move forward. A false narrative does nobody any good.
As important as the material is, I'd be remiss not to say that the prose itself is well written and engaging. I know some people took issue with the backstory chapters interspersed throughout the book, but I actually appreciated them, as they usually came just after the death of a minor character we never really got to know. Learning about their motivations after they disappear from the narrative rather than before had an interesting affect on the story.
I can see why Oprah chose this book for her book club and I think it deserves all the accolades and success that are sure to follow.
5/5 Stars.
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