Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
$14.31$14.31
FREE delivery: Tuesday, April 30 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Book Head
$8.05
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
- 2 VIDEOS
Audible sample Sample
Follow the author
OK
The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel Hardcover – August 2, 2016
Purchase options and add-ons
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.
Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDoubleday
- Publication dateAugust 2, 2016
- Dimensions6.48 x 1.16 x 9.53 inches
- ISBN-100385542364
- ISBN-13978-0385542364
- Lexile measure890L
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may ship from close to you
- Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.Highlighted by 8,165 Kindle readers
- In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.Highlighted by 6,111 Kindle readers
- The Great War had always been between the white and the black. It always would be.Highlighted by 5,857 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Get it, then get another copy for someone you know because you are definitely going to want to talk about it once you read that heart-stopping last page.”
--Oprah Winfrey (Oprah's Book Club 2016 Selection)
“[A] potent, almost hallucinatory novel... It possesses the chilling matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift…He has told a story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present.”
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Think Toni Morrison (Beloved), Alex Haley (Roots); think 12 Years a Slave…An electrifying novel…a great adventure tale, teeming with memorable characters…Tense, graphic, uplifting and informed, this is a story to share and remember.”
--People, (Book of the Week)
"With this novel, Colson Whitehead proves that he belongs on any short list of America's greatest authors--his talent and range are beyond impressive and impossible to ignore. The Underground Railroad is an American masterpiece, as much a searing document of a cruel history as a uniquely brilliant work of fiction."
--Michael Schaub, NPR
“Far and away the most anticipated literary novel of the year, The Underground Railroad marks a new triumph for Whitehead…[A] book that resonates with deep emotional timbre. The Underground Railroad reanimates the slave narrative, disrupts our settled sense of the past and stretches the ligaments of history right into our own era...The canon of essential novels about America's peculiar institution just grew by one.”
--Ron Charles, Washington Post
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This was her grandmother talking. Cora’s grandmother had never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon in the port of Ouidah and the water dazzled after her time in the fort’s dungeon. The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first, then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two by two. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she’d be reunited with her father, down there in the dark. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn’t keep the pace of the long march, the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail. Her mother had died years before.
Cora’s grandmother was sold a few times on the trek to the fort, passed between slavers for cowrie shells and glass beads. It was hard to say how much they paid for her in Ouidah as she was part of a bulk purchase, eighty-eight human souls for sixty crates of rum and gunpowder, the price arrived upon after the standard haggling in Coast English. Able-bodied men and child- bearing women fetched more than juveniles, making an individual accounting difficult.
The Nanny was out of Liverpool and had made two previous stops along the Gold Coast. The captain staggered his purchases, rather than find himself with cargo of singular culture and disposition. Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue. This was the ship’s final port of call before they crossed the Atlantic. Two yellow-haired sailors rowed Ajarry out to the ship, humming. White skin like bone.
The noxious air of the hold, the gloom of confinement, and the screams of those shackled to her contrived to drive Ajarry to madness. Because of her tender age, her captors did not immedi- ately force their urges upon her, but eventually some of the more seasoned mates dragged her from the hold six weeks into the pas- sage. She twice tried to kill herself on the voyage to America, once by denying herself food and then again by drowning. The sailors stymied her both times, versed in the schemes and inclinations of chattel. Ajarry didn’t even make it to the gunwale when she tried to jump overboard. Her simpering posture and piteous aspect, recognizable from thousands of slaves before her, betrayed her intentions. Chained head to toe, head to toe, in exponential misery.
Although they had tried not to get separated at the auction in Ouidah, the rest of her family was purchased by Portuguese trad- ers from the frigate Vivilia, next seen four months later drifting ten miles off Bermuda. Plague had claimed all on board. Authori- ties lit the ship on fire and watched her crackle and sink. Cora’s grandmother knew nothing about the ship’s fate. For the rest of her life she imagined her cousins worked for kind and generous masters up north, engaged in more forgiving trades than her own, weaving or spinning, nothing in the fields. In her stories, Isay and Sidoo and the rest somehow bought their way out of bondage and lived as free men and women in the City of Pennsylvania, a place she had overheard two white men discuss once. These fantasies gave Ajarry comfort when her burdens were such to splinter her into a thousand pieces.
The next time Cora’s grandmother was sold was after a month in the pest house on Sullivan’s Island, once the physicians certified her and the rest of the Nanny’s cargo clear of illness. Another busy day on the Exchange. A big auction always drew a colorful crowd. Traders and procurers from up and down the coast converged on Charleston, checking the merchandise’s eyes and joints and spines, wary of venereal distemper and other afflictions. Onlook- ers chewed fresh oysters and hot corn as the auctioneers shouted into the air. The slaves stood naked on the platform. There was a bidding war over a group of Ashanti studs, those Africans of renowned industry and musculature, and the foreman of a lime- stone quarry bought a bunch of pickaninnies in an astounding bargain. Cora’s grandmother saw a little boy among the gawk- ers eating rock candy and wondered what he was putting in his mouth.
Just before sunset an agent bought her for two hundred and twenty-six dollars. She would have fetched more but for that sea- son’s glut of young girls. His suit was made of the whitest cloth she had ever seen. Rings set with colored stone flashed on his fin- gers. When he pinched her breasts to see if she was in flower, the metal was cool on her skin. She was branded, not for the first or last time, and fettered to the rest of the day’s acquisitions. The coffle began their long march south that night, staggering behind the trader’s buggy. The Nanny by that time was en route back to Liverpool, full of sugar and tobacco. There were fewer screams belowdecks.
You would have thought Cora’s grandmother cursed, so many times was she sold and swapped and resold over the next few years. Her owners came to ruin with startling frequency. Her first mas- ter got swindled by a man who sold a device that cleaned cotton twice as fast as Whitney’s gin. The diagrams were convincing, but in the end Ajarry was another asset liquidated by order of the magistrate. She went for two hundred and eighteen dollars in a hasty exchange, a drop in price occasioned by the realities of the local market. Another owner expired from dropsy, whereupon his widow held an estate sale to fund a return to her native Europe, where it was clean. Ajarry spent three months as the property of a Welshman who eventually lost her, three other slaves, and two hogs in a game of whist. And so on.
Her price fluctuated. When you are sold that many times, the world is teaching you to pay attention. She learned to quickly adjust to the new plantations, sorting the nigger breakers from the merely cruel, the layabouts from the hardworking, the inform- ers from the secret-keepers. Masters and mistresses in degrees of wickedness, estates of disparate means and ambition. Sometimes the planters wanted nothing more than to make a humble living, and then there were men and women who wanted to own the world, as if it were a matter of the proper acreage. Two hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and sixty, two hundred and seventy dollars. Wherever she went it was sugar and indigo, except for a stint folding tobacco leaves for one week before she was sold again. The trader called upon the tobacco plantation looking for slaves of breeding age, preferably with all their teeth and of pliable disposi- tion. She was a woman now. Off she went.
She knew that the white man’s scientists peered beneath things to understand how they worked. The movement of the stars across the night, the cooperation of humors in the blood. The temper- ature requirements for a healthy cotton harvest. Ajarry made a science of her own black body and accumulated observations. Each thing had a value and as the value changed, everything else changed also. A broken calabash was worth less than one that held its water, a hook that kept its catfish more prized than one that relinquished its bait. In America the quirk was that people were things. Best to cut your losses on an old man who won’t survive a trip across the ocean. A young buck from strong tribal stock got customers into a froth. A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money. If you were a thing—a cart or a horse or a slave—your value determined your possibilities. She minded her place.
Finally, Georgia. A representative of the Randall plantation bought her for two hundred and ninety-two dollars, in spite of the new blankness behind her eyes, which made her look simple- minded. She never drew a breath off Randall land for the rest of her life. She was home, on this island in sight of nothing.
Cora’s grandmother took a husband three times. She had a pre- dilection for broad shoulders and big hands, as did Old Randall, although the master and his slave had different sorts of labor in mind. The two plantations were well-stocked, ninety head of nig- ger on the northern half and eighty-five head on the southern half. Ajarry generally had her pick. When she didn’t, she was patient.
Her first husband developed a hankering for corn whiskey and started using his big hands to make big fists. Ajarry wasn’t sad to see him disappear down the road when they sold him to a sugar- cane estate in Florida. She next took up with one of the sweet boys from the southern half. Before he passed from cholera he liked to share stories from the Bible, his former master being more liberal- minded when it came to slaves and religion. She enjoyed the stories and parables and supposed that white men had a point: Talk of salvation could give an African ideas. Poor sons of Ham. Her last husband had his ears bored for stealing honey. The wounds gave up pus until he wasted away.
Ajarry bore five children by those men, each delivered in the same spot on the planks of the cabin, which she pointed to when they misstepped. That’s where you came from and where I’ll put you back if you don’t listen. Teach them to obey her and maybe they’ll obey all the masters to come and they will survive. Two died miserably of fever. One boy cut his foot while playing on a rusted plow, which poisoned his blood. Her youngest never woke up after a boss hit him in the head with a wooden block. One after another. At least they were never sold off, an older woman told Ajarry. Which was true—back then Randall rarely sold the little ones. You knew where and how your children would die. The child that lived past the age of ten was Cora’s mother, Mabel.
Ajarry died in the cotton, the bolls bobbing around her like whitecaps on the brute ocean. The last of her village, keeled over in the rows from a knot in her brain, blood pouring from her nose and white froth covering her lips. As if it could have been anywhere else. Liberty was reserved for other people, for the citi- zens of the City of Pennsylvania bustling a thousand miles to the north. Since the night she was kidnapped she had been appraised and reappraised, each day waking upon the pan of a new scale. Know your value and you know your place in the order. To escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence: impossible.
It was her grandmother talking that Sunday evening when Caesar approached Cora about the underground railroad, and she said no.
Three weeks later she said yes.
This time it was her mother talking.
Product details
- Publisher : Doubleday; First Edition (August 2, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385542364
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385542364
- Lexile measure : 890L
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.48 x 1.16 x 9.53 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #58,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #122 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)
- #3,995 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Colson Whitehead is the author eight novels and two works on non-fiction, including The Underground Railroad, which received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Heartland Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Hurston-Wright Award, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is being adapted by Barry Jenkins into a TV series for Amazon. Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys received the Pulitzer Prize, The Kirkus Prize, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in New York City.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
When I say it is different, I hesitate: It is, in many ways, a tale of the deplorable conditions of slavery that are all too familiar. The difference is the absolute bleakness with which Whitehead overwhelms the reader in a setting that gives birth to both his narrative and the psyches of his characters. Largely told through the limited third person perspective of the protagonist Cora (though other characters’ perspectives are also employed), the bleakness of her and her people’s lot emanates from the pages: bleak circumstances, little hope, and only momentary rests in a landscape rife with violence, danger, hate, and darkness. Indeed, Cora’s notion that the world seemed “As if… there were no places to escape to, only places to flee” is a notion the reader retains throughout this work.
What Whitehead has done is recreate a landscape similar to the one found in Zone One, a zombie tale that, like the novel reviewed herein, defies the conventions of its genre. The barren and bleak wasteland containing the possibility of danger at every turn, with only moments of rest in between episodes of danger, is reminiscent of The Underground Railroad. Such a world is expected in a zombie tale, and yes, dangers were possible at every turn for escaped slaves, but Whitehead brings them to life so masterfully that it is sometimes gut wrenching to turn the pages. Just as in Zone One, we know any respite or peace found in The Underground Railroad is, as its main characters also are, in constant danger. “Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation,” the narrator remarks, and time and again, the reader gets lost in the same reverie, only for the ugly horror looming in the background to intrude upon both the characters’ and the reader’s respite.
Whitehead’s prose is refreshing in its descriptiveness. His focus on darkness, blackness, and barrenness in many of his scenes adds to the suspenseful effect of ever-present danger. His haunting description of burned fields and mountains in Tennessee is among the most vivid and undeniably memorable of the novel. The biggest complaint by negative reviewers on Amazon is that it is “poorly written,” mostly referring to Whitehead’s tendency to use sentence fragments within his prose, yet these are typically well-placed and rhythmical, adding a verse-like effect and sometimes adding the effect of fragmentation of thoughts, speech, etc. Human beings often think and speak in fragments, and these seem fitting for Whitehead’s chosen point-of-view, making his characters more authentic. The technique also emphasizes the fragmented society about which he writes. In short, everything Whitehead does works together masterfully towards a single effect even Poe would admire, and the chilling horror in the aforementioned mountainside scenes even rivals Poe’s masterful descriptive powers.
There is yet another similarity to Zone One: the idea of “otherness.” In Zone One, Whitehead “challenges readers to think about how we dehumanize others, how society tramples and consumes individuals, and how vulnerable we all are" (from the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Vol. 2, "The Contemporary Period.) The Lieutenant, a character in Zone One, says of zombies, “Mustn’t humanize them. The whole thing breaks down unless you are fundamentally sure that they are not you." Clearly the whites depicted in The Underground Railroad, save the ones involved with the railroad itself, had applied that logic to African Americans. Accepting such a lie not only condones but also encourages the horrific violence Whitehead describes, violence with an unfortunate historical basis.
In short, The Underground Railroad is a contemporary masterpiece. Whitehead’s “Acknowledgements” section references several works to which he feels indebted; it is doubtless that he could have added hundreds more. While indebted to slave narratives, Whitehead has the ability to describe the realities of slavery with its ugly and naked truths woven into a nightmarish reality that is perhaps closer to depicting the psyche of enslaved men and women who longed for freedom than those primary sources whose audience shaped their purpose and limited their range of expression. Whitehead resists employing flowery prose and cliche figures of speech to attempt to depict what his setting, a claustrophobic nightmare characterized by darkness and ugliness and dotted with people just as ugly, does for him. The story is breathed forth from this setting almost effortlessly.
To call this a bleak book without hope, though, would be misguided. At one point, during an exploration of a library, Cora finds many stories of her people, “the stories of all the colored people she had ever known, the stories of black people yet to be born, the foundations of their triumphs.” The Underground Railroad is an important and significant contribution to these stories of the African American experience -- a story of struggles and triumphs, nightmares and dreams, hopes and fears. The Underground Railroad, like numerous other important African American works, makes room for hope and endurance in the midst of adversity and a universe that, though it may indifferently overwhelm its inhabitants, is still one in which we must live.
The most compelling part of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is the discussion of survival of a beautiful mind through terrible adversity. Cora’s matter-of-fact description of the trials she suffers—histrionics would do no good—and her understanding that to survive is to win against the forces of darkness is a commentary of the brutality of slavery no screed could better.
I am an old white male. Slavery has always been a repulsive condition … but a “condition.” I can’t know how close Whitehead’s imagined reality is to the individual human reality of keeping hope alive when there is no reason to, but Cora has put a human face on the horrible condition I have imagined since childhood.
The writing is economical, clear and sometimes just beautiful. The villain is as much cotton—“an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood”—as it is the enslavers and the Ridgeways. Colson says, “At the auction block they tallied the souls purchased at each auction, and on the plantations the overseers preserved the names of workers in rows of tight cursive. Every name an asset, breathing capital, profit made flesh. The peculiar institution made Cora into a maker of lists as well. In her inventory of loss people were not reduced to sums but multiplied by their kindnesses. People she had loved, people who had helped her.” A whole new take on the concept of human capital.
There are aspects of the book that are either problems the writer and editors didn’t correct or are quite possibly an instance of a brilliant writer deciding to ignore the rules. In main line reviews, there is much mention made of the physical underground railroad. I found that helpful, because it loosed the bonds of history to remind me that the story is essentially science fiction. Tempting to call it historical fiction, but historical fiction almost always weaves fictional material around the true historical timeline. Whitehead did not do this, and it occasionally caused unnecessary trouble. I don’t think South Carolina had an especially paternalistic view of slaves and former slaves, but Colson’s imagining of it set the stage for what really happened at Tuskegee starting in the 1930’s. I’m sure there were some folks worried about an exploding Black population, but that seemed a weak pretext to base an (imaginary) doctrine on. But the railroad was always in the background, reminding us of the fictive basis of the novel. Other throwaway time disjunctures don’t work so well, e.g., Cora speaks of “the rags that made everyone happy.” While Joplin said the ‘ragged’ playing style had been around for a while, nobody called it ragtime until about 1895. So, why take our train of thought onto that side track when we are being regularly jolted between historical events, back and forward movement (e.g., Caesar’s backstory reappears for no particular reason ¾ through the book)? Also, there never was a credible reason Randall was so fixated on Cora, except to keep the indefatigable Ridgeway on her trail.
Finally, I thought Whitehead was enslaved by his structure. Cora is pragmatic, always looking forward despite terrible loss. We don’t get inside her head to see her thoughts much, because to be true to his character must let her have her barricades against the outside world. I wish he’d let us in a bit more.
Ah, well. The book is an often beautifully written, jumping, jarring, jolting ride very much like Cora’s ride under ground. A fine book all in all.
The book had a lot of little things I liked, for example, I really appreciated the fact Whitehead did not want to leave any type of little details out and let us know exactly how hard it was for African Americans of the time. Though I do feel like sometimes he was trying not to get too deep into some of the wretched actions that were actually committed, almost as if Whitehead’s goal was to keep the book PG-13 instead of allowing it to get to R and all dark or gorey. One thing I also really liked was how the book was structured, almost as if you yourself were on the Underground Railroad moving from state to state, chapter to chapter, along with little side stories and back stories in between. On top of that, I also liked the intensity of the book as it felt like there was never really a dull moment. One thing I did dislike was how some of the writing lacked a definitive meaning leaving it open to interpretation, but it could have been interpreted in so many different ways leaving with what seems as no meaning at all.
Overall, it is an amazing book and should historically go down as one of the greatest literary works from the 21st century as this novel does not only convey a story but exposes America’s dark and brutal history.
Top reviews from other countries
Milieu du XIXe siècle, Géorgie. Nous sommes avant la Guerre de Sécession (1861-1865) et l’Amérique du Nord est encore divisée par la ligne Mason-Dixon qui sépare les états abolitionnistes du Nord des états esclavagistes du Sud. Cora est une jeune femme de seize ans, esclave dans une plantation de Géorgie. Sa grand-mère, Ajarry, a été amenée ici à bord d’un des navires négriers. Sa mère, Mabel, l’a abandonnée pour s’enfuir et contrairement à de nombreux autres esclaves qui ont tenté de trouver la liberté, n’a jamais été reprise. Terrence Randall, le propriétaire de la plantation, est particulièrement sadique. Cora, à son tour, s’enfuit, avec l’aide de l’Underground Railroad, ses conducteurs, et ses gardiens de station. Mais elle est poursuivie par Ridgeway, le chasseur d’esclaves ayant échoué à retrouver sa mère et qui cette fois a juré de ramener Cora à la plantation.
Le parcours de Cora l’amènera à traverser plusieurs états américains qui, dans la construction imaginaire de Colson Whitehead, illustrent chacun à leur tour un modèle social et politique de traitement de l’esclave. Certains exercent une violence ouverte et institutionnalisée envers les Noirs, esclaves échappés ou hommes libres ; d’autres offrent ce qui s’apparente à un asile mais cachent sous des atours idylliques une réalité bien plus violente et sombre que la surface ne le laisse présager. Le roman s’organise en onze chapitres qui alternent portrait d’un personnage et portrait d’un état, une des stations empruntées par Cora dans sa fuite : Ajarry, Géorgie, Ridgeway, Caroline du Sud, Stevens, Caroline du Nord, Ethel, Tennessee, Caesar, Indiana, Mabel.
Colson Whitehead s’appuie sur des réalités historiques mais brouille le temps et l’espace pour mieux en extraire la continuité des maux et étendre la question de l’esclave et de ses conséquences à l’époque moderne. Pour vous expliquer cela, je vais utiliser l’exemple de la Caroline du Sud, première étape de la fuite de Cora après la Géorgie. Cora ne s’appelle plus Cora, mais Bessie. (Cora est un personnage universel. En étant attentif, on croisera aussi une évocation d’Anne Frank…) Elle et son compagnon Caesar ont trouvé refuge dans cet état qui offre la protection du gouvernement aux esclaves fugitifs. La ville symbolise la modernité, notamment à travers le Griffin Building, à la fois hôpital et administration. Immeuble de douze étages, il possède un ascenseur. Le lecteur devine alors que nous avons effectué un saut dans le temps. Le premier ascenseur utilisé aux Etats-Unis le fut à New York, dans le Equitable Life Building construit en 1870, soit des années après la fin de la guerre de sécession. Cora/Bessie va découvrir l’envers du décor et les sombres desseins d’un gouvernement dont elle est devenue la propriété. Colson Whitehead parle du programme de stérilisation forcé qui a eu court au début du XXe siècle, ou encore de l’étude de Tuskegee sur la syphilis entre 1932 et 1972. Continuité des maux.
Le récit saute ainsi, dans l’espace et le temps. Chaque nouvelle station apporte ses espoirs, ses horreurs et ses symboles, comme autant d’univers parallèles. L’un des puissants symboles du livre est le « Freedom trail », cette route bordée d’arbres qui accrochent à leurs branches les corps mutilés des hommes, femmes, enfants noirs assassinés dans un état, la Caroline du Nord, qui a aboli l’esclavage, mais a aussi aboli les noirs. Lieu d’horreur quasi mystique qui semble n’avoir ni début ni fin, le Freedom Trail symbolise à la fois la violence sans fin exercée sur les Noirs américains et le parcours de Cora vers la liberté parsemé de morts.
Underground Railroad est un livre dur qui ne fait l’impasse sur aucune forme de violence, de la torture aux violences sexuelles, en passant bien sûr par le meurtre pur et simple. Mais la plus grande violence montrée par Colson Whitehead est celle qui ne guérit jamais : la déshumanisation. L’esclavage est montré comme un système économique. Le corps de l’esclave possède une valeur marchande. La grand-mère de Cora, Ajarry dont l’histoire ouvre le roman, est vendue et revendue plusieurs fois avant même d’arriver sur le continent américain. Les corps des esclaves morts sont vendus par des trafiquants de cadavres pour des expérimentations médicales. Cora travaille comme exposition vivante dans un musée sur l’histoire américaine alors même que les blancs sont représentés par des mannequins. Ridgeway, le chasseur d’esclaves, calcule la pertinence de ramener un esclave ou le tuer en fonction du profit réalisé face aux dépenses engagées. L’esclave n’est toujours qu’une marchandise, un objet, jamais un être humain. Le 26 juillet dernier, le sénateur républicain de l’Arkansas, Tom Cotton (ce nom ne s’invente pas), décrivait l’esclavage comme « un mal nécessaire » au développement économique du pays. Continuité des maux.
Colson Whitehead use de l’imaginaire pour construire une histoire de l’Amérique noire et du mensonge que constitue à ses yeux ce pays. Il bat en brèche le mythe de la déclaration d’indépendance perpétuant la légende d’un pays dans lequel les hommes ont été créés libres et égaux en y opposant l’histoire des Indiens d’Amérique et des esclaves africains, des terres volées et des vies volées. Il porte son roman par une écriture puissante, réaliste et directe, qui ne joue jamais des artifices du pathos, mais qui pourtant ne s’éloigne jamais non plus du sujet et des personnages. Il vous laisse vous débrouiller avec vos sentiments, sans vous indiquer là où il faut rire, là où il faut pleurer. (Spoiler : il n’y a pas beaucoup d’occasion de rire.) Underground Railroad est un livre absolument remarquable. Une des meilleures lectures de l’année en ce qui me concerne.