Colson Whitehead

Biography (adapted from Britannica)

Colson Whitehead, full name is Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead, was born November 6, 1969, in New York City. His parents, Arch and Mary Anne Whitehead, owned a recruiting firm; he has three siblings.
He's an American author known for innovative novels that explore social themes, including racism, while often incorporating fantastical elements. He was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for consecutive books: the historical novels The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019).

Biography (adapted from Britannica)

Whitehead grew up in Manhattan, reading especially comics and science fiction from an early age. In 1991 he graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in English and comparative literature. He then began writing movie, book, and television criticism for the weekly news and culture paper The Village Voice. He left that job in the late 1990s to concentrate on writing novels.
His first novel The Intuitionist (1999) blended suspense and fantasy. The story centers on Lila Mae Watson, a Black elevator inspector who does her job through intuition and psychic connection rather than scientific means. After being framed for an elevator mishap, she uses detective skills to unravel the conspiracy. In the book Whitehead explored issues revolving around race, gender, and social progress. The Intuitionist earned widespread acclaim, and it was followed two years later by John Henry Days (2001).

Biography (adapted from Britannica)

That novel, John Henry Days, centers on a Black freelance journalist named J who travels from New York City to West Virginia for a festival dedicated to John Henry, a character from African American folklore. According to legend, John Henry was a Black railroad-construction worker who bet that he could drive a steel spike into solid rock as fast as a newly invented steel-driving machine. Although he won the race and the wager, he died from the exertion. In the book J compares John Henry’s struggle against the machine to his own desire to break the record for most consecutive days attending publicity events.

Biography (adapted from Britannica)

Whitehead next published Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) and Sag Harbor (2009).
In Zone One (2011) he described a post-apocalyptic America in which people try to survive after a virus has turned some humans into zombies.
Whitehead also wrote nonfiction, notably The Colossus of New York (2003), a collection of essays about New York City, and The Noble Hustle (2014), about the 2011 World Series of Poker.
During his career Whitehead taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States. He participated in speaking engagements. Among his other honors, Whitehead was the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim fellowship (2013).

Additional Biographical Info (from his website)

John Henry Days (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. The novel received the Young Lions Fiction Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
The Colossus of New York (2003) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Apex Hides the Hurt (2006), his novel about a "nomenclature consultant" who gets an assignment to name a town, received the PEN/Oakland Award.
Sag Harbor (2009) is a novel about teenagers hanging out in Sag Harbor, Long Island during the summer of 1985. It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

Additional Biographical Info (from his website)

Zone One (2011), about post-apocalyptic New York City, was a New York Times Bestseller.
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, a non-fiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker, appeared in 2014.
The Underground Railroad, published in the summer of 2016, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Carnegie Medal for Fiction, and was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.
The Nickel Boys, a novel inspired by the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, won the Pulitzer Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
His latest novel Harlem Shuffle was published in September 2021.

Additional Biographical Info (from his website)

His reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper's and Granta.
He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
In 2018, New York State named him their New York State Author, and in 2020 the Library of Congress awarded him their Prize for American Fiction.

Additional Biographical Info (from his website)

He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.
Apparently he can’t keep a job.
He lives in New York City.

Cast of characters

Cora is the protagonist and primary narrator of the novel; we follow her story as she travels the Underground Railroad until she finds freedom, or hopes to.
She is a determined character who begins on a Georgia Plantation owned by the Randalls. As a young girl, she is abandoned by her mother, Mabel, who runs away. Cora finds solace in tending to her mother’s garden plot even as she is relegated to the status of an outcast among slaves because she has no parents. When another slave, Blake, claims her garden for his dog, she smashes the dog house with a hatchet.
She escapes, with Caesar, another slave, to South Carolina where she becomes Bessie Carpenter working as a nanny to white children, the Anderson family, and then as a living model for a natural history museum’s exhibits.

Cast of characters

She flees alone to North Carolina when she and Caesar are discovered by slave catcher Ridgeway, and she hides in an attic for months with Ethel and Martin.
Ridgeway eventually captures her and takes her through Tennessee on her way back to the plantation. But she is rescued by Royal and two other Railroad agents who take her to a free black farm in Indiana, owned by John Valentine, where she heals, falls in love, and lives a normal life. The farm is eventually destroyed by white settlers in an act of racial hatred, and Ridgeway finds Cora again. She pushes him to his death in an Underground Railroad station and escapes for the final time.
Her story comes to an ambiguously optimistic end when she joins a caravan heading to California.

Cast of characters

Mabel is Cora's mother and Ajarry's daughter, born into slavery on the Randall plantation.
She survives sexual assault by Moses, a slave, and falls in love with Grayson, another slave, who dies of fever shortly after she gives birth at 14 to his daughter Cora.
When Cora is 9, she escapes to let Cora know that freedom is possible, but tries to return for Cora's sake. On her way back through the swamp, she's bitten by a cottonmouth snake and dies. Because no one finds her body, most believe she has successfully escaped, although Cora believes she's been abandoned and tries to find her mother periodically throughout the novel. As Cora grows up, she resents her mother for leaving her behind and never rescuing her.

Cast of characters

Ajarry was born in Africa, but sold into slavery on the Randall plantation in Georgia. She has three husbands, all of whom either die or are sold off, and gives birth to 5 children, all of whom die except Mabel, Cora's mother.
She is the one who begins the garden plot between the cabins, growing yams and okra; when she dies, the plot passes to Mabel, her daughter, and then to Cora, Mabel's daughter.
She dies of an aneurysm while working in the cotton fields, her life defined by slavery.

Cast of characters

Caesar was born a slave to Lily Jane and Jerome on a small farm in Virginia owned by Mrs. Garner, an elderly woman who teaches her slaves to read and write, and promises to free them at her death. But when she dies, they're sold off, separately, and Caesar goes to the Randall plantation. He's also skilled at making wooden bowls and sells them at weekend markets.
He decides to escape and convinces Cora to come along; he needs her determination and survival instinct. They grow close during the escape, but a romance never develops when they settle in South Carolina.
Although they initially feel safe enough in South Carolina to stay, rather than continue on the Underground Railroad, Ridgeway finds them and puts Caesar in jail where he's killed by a white mob.

Cast of characters

Lovey is Cora’s closest friend on the Randall plantation; she loves to dance and celebrate the simple, small joys of plantation life. She runs after Cora and Caesar when they flee, but is captured. Cora learns of her fate near the end of the novel: once captured, Lovey was impaled on a stake, her body displayed as a warning to other slaves on Randall.

Cast of characters

Arnold Ridgeway is the notorious, ruthless, violent bounty hunter and slave catcher who is obsessed with re-capturing Cora because her mother Mabel escaped him. He's a white supremacist, motivated by a belief in property ownership and a desire for financial gain. He believes that slaves are property, a lower class of human beings, as are American Indians, and immigrants. He often refers to his quarries as "it" rather than him or her.
When Cora escapes from him in Tennessee, she strangles him with her chains, but he survives. Finally, she pushes him down the steps of the Railroad station.

Cast of characters

Boseman is Ridgeway's partner who wears a necklace of human ears won in a wrestling match from an Indian. He tries to rape Cora, but Ridgeway stops him. He is shot and killed when Royal and other Railroad agents rescue Cora from Ridgeway’s wagon in Tennessee.
Jasper is the black slave captured by Ridgeway who travels with Cora in the wagon. Because he constantly sings, Ridgeway shoots and kills him. The quiet is worth more to him than the bounty, which is meager once they deduct costs.
Homer is the 10-year-old black boy who drives Ridgeway’s wagon and keeps his records. Formerly a slave, he was set free by Ridgeway, but stays with him. Cora can't understand why he tolerates Ridgeway's racism and violence.

Cast of characters

August Carter, a Delaware merchant described in the novel as "Robust in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, with cool blue eyes that made the lesser sort pay attention to his mealy arguments. That worst sort, an abolitionist with a printing press."
Ridgeway of course kills him, rapes his wife, and burns down his house.
Miss Lucy is the proctor in the dormitory when Cora lives in South Carolina. She recommends Cora leave the nanny/housekeeper position with the Andersons and take a job as a living exhibit in the Museum of Natural Wonders. She also encourages Cora to have the sterilization surgery recommended by the government doctors. Cora doesn't trust her and thinks she's part of the state's eugenics plans to control the growth of the black population.

Cast of characters

Martin Wells is the North Carolina station agent who finds Cora at the closed station, but hides her in his attic despite the danger. He is a reluctant member of the Underground Railroad because his abolitionist father passed the position on to him. Cora is turned in by their Irish maid, Fiona, and Martin and his wife Ethel are lynched when the town discovers they've been hiding Cora.
Ethel Wells, Martin's wife, was born into a wealthy family in Virginia, wanted to be a missionary to Africa but became a schoolteacher when her parents didn't approve. She reluctantly marries Martin. But when she finds Cora ill, she finds her "mission" in nursing Cora back to health.

Cast of characters

John and Gloria Valentine own the farm where Royal takes Cora after rescuing her from Ridgeway. It's a community of free black people and runaways in Indiana.
John is light-skinned and can pass as white. When he met his wife, Gloria was still a slave working on an indigo plantation, but he purchased her freedom and married her shortly after. When their sons were born, they decided to flee the racial violence of the South for farming in Indiana and took in runaway slaves. John Valentine became their advocate.
Their farm is eventually destroyed by white settlers who feel they have a prior claim to such land and don't want a black farmer as a neighbor. The family escapes to Oklahoma.

Cast of characters

Royal is a freeborn black man who began working for the Underground Railroad in New York City. He lives on the Valentine farm and takes Cora there after rescuing her from Ridgeway.
Their romance eventually blossoms and he becomes the first person Cora truly loves and confides in. He shows her the Underground Railroad station near the farm, where Cora eventually escapes. When the Valentine farm is stormed by Ridgeway and the white mob, Royal is shot and dies in Cora’s arms.

Questions for discussion

This book has a somewhat unusual structure. Basically it is a sequential narrative of Cora's journey on the Underground Railroad, from the Randall plantation in Georgia, from which she escapes, to South Carolina, then North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and the North. In these chapters, Cora is the narrator.
But interspersed are other "non-travel" chapters, like "Ajarry," the first chapter. Obviously it provides necessary background information because Ajarry was the original native African, captured and transported as a slave. She was Mabel's mother and Cora's grandmother. In these chapters, the narration is third person.

Questions for discussion

But other chapters, like "Stevens" and "Ethel" seem like separate inserts, that interrupt the basic narrative. So, why are they there?
- "Stevens" is the chapter about the white medical student taking an anatomy course who is also a body snatcher.
- "Ethel" is the childhood history of Martin's wife.
Several other chapters are devoted to characters within the narrative, like Ridgeway, Caesar, and Mabel. Other are devoted to "stations" along the Underground Railroad, like George, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and The North.
Note: the chapters on Ethel, Caesar, and Mabel occur after their deaths.
So, why this structure?

Questions for discussion

Why are the stations, the trains, the cars on the underground railroad described as a literal railroad. We know that the railroad is a metaphor.

Questions for discussion

According to literary sources, this novel, by genre, could be classified as:
- Historical fiction
- Fantasy
- Fugitive slave novel (see last week's slide on the sources at UNC)
- You could even add travel fiction
As I was reading this, I kept thinking of Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier, which we read at the beginning of last term. It's an epic novel, like the Odyssey. In that novel, Inman, wounded from the Civil War, leaves the hospital to trek back to Cold Mountain, and Ada. It's a long, harrowing journey, without much of a happy ending. Along the way, he has various "adventures" and runs into an odd assortment of characters, all of which he has to survive to continue the journey.
Would it be fair to say that Underground Railroad has some epic characteristics?

Questions for discussion

If this novel has some epic qualities, then it's about more than just this particular character and journey. What, then, is this novel really about? Are there "larger themes" at work here?

Questions for discussion

Over the past couple of years, in these courses, we've read some books that focus on issues in the formation, history, and identity of America.
In addition to Cold Mountain, we also read The Warmth of Other Suns, about the migration north, by Isabel Wilkerson, The Cutting Season, by Attica Locke, and The Invention of Wings about Sarah Grimke, abolitionist, by Sue Monk Kidd.
And just this past fall, we focused on the history of the US South and West, including novels like Willa Cather's O Pioneers and My Antonia, as well as David McCullough The Pioneers about the initial expansion west, to Ohio.
Putting all this together, with everything else you know about this country, What does America mean? What kind of a nation is it? What do we represent?

Questions for discussion

In Picoult's novel, a couple of weeks ago, we saw the effects on a child when a mother deserts her; Diana's mother was on photography trips rather than at home, and Beatriz's mother also ran off, uninterested in or incapable of parenthood.
Clearly, Cora's relationship with her mother Mabel is a continuing influence on her life choices. She thinks, until the end of the novel, that her mother has escaped, perhaps to Canada, and has failed to return for her.
Is the lack of a mother different in this novel than in Picoult's.

Breakout room question

Last week, in my other section, just as we were finishing up, one of the class members asked if I was going to talk about Colson Whitehead's depiction of women in this novel. She seemed to feel that it was inadequate in some way. What do you think? Are the women in this novel fully realized?
A related question: Is this novel about the people affiliated with the Underground Railroad? Is it about Cora? Or is it ultimately about something else?
Another related question: Who is the most fully realized character is this novel?