The Underground Railroad
- ISBN-10
- 0708898394
- ISBN-13
- 9780708898390
- Series
- The Underground Railroad
- Category
- Fugitive slaves
- Pages
- 320
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016
- Publisher
- Orbit Books
- Author
- Colson Whitehead
Description
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North. In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates 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 the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2021-04-27
- 366 pages
- Paperback
- Fleet
Similar books
-
The Underground Railroad: A Novel
By Colson WhiteheadThe Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage--and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.
-
The Underground Railroad: A Primary Source History of the Journey to Freedom
By Philip WolnyTHE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER , THE LEADER OF THE LATE INSURRECTION IN SOUTHAMPTON , VA . AS FULLY AND VOLUNTARILY MADE TO THOMAS B. GRAY , To the prison where he was confined , and acknowledged by him to be when read bebee the Court of ...
-
What Was the Underground Railroad?
By Who HQ, Yona Zeldis McDonoughIncluding real stories from the "Railroad," What Was the Underground Railroad? will capture young readers' hearts: there are close calls with bounty hunters, exhausting struggles on the road, and unending sacrifices slaves made for freedom.
-
The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations
By Mary Ellen SnodgrassA pioneer of the frontier, Samuel Patterson was born in Acworth, in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, and arrived in the West at age four with his parents. In 1825, he settled in a log cabin at 6525 Africa Road on Alum Creek in East ...
-
The Underground Railroad
By Charles L. BlocksonNot every escaped slave was blessed with the eloquence of Frederick Douglass, who used his new-found freedom to become the supreme voice of the abolitionist movement. But every one of...
-
Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
By Eric FonerThe dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history.
-
Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad
By J. Blaine HudsonSims,. Thomas. (b. ¡828). Fugitive slave and fugitive slave rescue case. In February ¡85¡, 23-year-old Thomas Sims escaped from slavery in Savannah, Georgia, and made his way by ship to Boston, Massachusetts. After Sims' whereabouts ...
-
The Underground Railroad: The Journey to Freedom
By Ann MalaspinaIn The Underground Railroad: The Journey to Freedom, read how this secret system worked in the days leading up to the Civil War and the pivotal role it played in the abolitionist movement.
-
Passage on the Underground Railroad
A photographer's evocative interpretation of the history and places along the slave's path to freedom
-
The Underground Railroad: Path to Freedom
By Carole MarshThe 22-book American Milestone series is featured as "Retailers Recommended Fabulous Products" in the August 2012 edition of Educational Dealer magazine.