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Writer: 「Golson Whitehead is an Africa- American Novelist who published seven books, include the The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan. He attended Trinity in Manhattan. Whitehead graduated from Harvard University in 1991. in college he became friends with poet Kevin Young. He has taught at Princeton University, New York University, the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.In the spring of 2015, he joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language.」 Story: Abolitionist network help Cora and her friend escape from the slave tortured life traveling from Georgia to South Carolina to North Carolina to Tennessee to Indiana, Thanks to all black and white railroad workers to risk their lives to save them and help Cora get rid of slave destiny since her grandmother Ajarry, who was kidnapped in Africa, sold into slavery and repeatedly swapped and resold in America. From the story, we can feel all the emotional fallout: the fear, the humiliation, the loss of dignity and control of the daily brutality of life on the plantation. “To escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence.”(p.8) 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” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” and with brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift. Highlights vs self- reflection: 1.p.192:”..Edgar Delany knew they were descendants of cursed, black Ham, who had survived the Flood by clinging to the peaks of a mountain in Africa. Ethel thougth that if they were cursed, they required Christian guidance all the more.” 2.p.192:”Some maintained that the negro was the remnant of a race of giants who had ruled the earth in an ancient time” 3.p.194”Resentment was the hinge of her personality 4.p.193”If you want to help savages, her father said, teach schoo. The brain of a five-year-old is more savage and unruly than the oldest jungle darky” 5.p.228:”If the world will not stir itself to punish the wicked. No one stopped her. 6.p.235:”Then you can have any book you want. But if he didn’t read, he was a slave.” 7.p.235:”Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep strying. If Caesar figured the route home, he’d never travel again. Otherwise he was liable to go from one troublesome island to the nest, never recognizing where he was, until the world ran out. Unless she came with him. With Cor, he’d find the way home.” 8.p.239:”She felt conspicuous, older than all of them and so far behind. Cora undertood why old Howard had wept, back in Miss Handler’s schoolhouse. An interloper, like a rodent that had chewed through the wall.” 9.p.267:”The underground railroad is bigger than its operators-it’s all of you,too. The small spurs, the big trunk lines. We have the newest locomotives and the obsolete engines, and we have handcars like that one. It goes everywhere, to places we know and those we don’t. We got this tunnel right here, running beneath us, and no one knows where it leads. If we keep the railroad running, and none of us can figure it out, maybe you can.” She told him she didn’t know why it was there, or what it meant. All she know is that she didn’t want to run anymore. 11.p.235:”The name of the firm that manufactured their chains, imprinted in the metal like a promise of pain. 12.p.251:”The Valentines had performed a miracle. She sat among the proof of it; more than that, she was part of that miracle. 13.P.253:”Valentine’s motto: stay and contribute.” 14.p.262:”Lumbly’s words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness. 15.p.274:”Cora was friendly with Gloria, who called Cora” the adventuress,” owing to the many complications of her journey. 16.p.276:”What we built here… there are too many white people who don’t want us to have it. Even if they didn’t suspect our alliance with the railroad. Look around. If they kill a slave for learning his letters, how do you think they feel about a library: We are in a room brimming with ideas. Too many ideas for a colored man. Or woman.” Cora had come to cherish the impossible treasures of the Valentine farm so completely that she’d forgotten how impossible they were.” 17.p.277:”The evil soaks into the soil. Some say it steeps and gets stronger. Maybe this isn’t the place. Maybe Gloria and I should have kept going after Virginia.” 18.p.277:”I am proud of what we’ve built here, but we started over once. We can do it again. I have two strong sons to help now, and we’ll get a nice sum for the land. Gloria has always wanted to see Oklahoma, although for the life of me I don’t know why. I try to make her happy.” 19.p.278:”Don’t you know: white man ain’t going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.” 20.p.284:”The Valentine farm had taken glorious steps into the future, he said. White benefactors supplied schoolbooks for their children-why not ask them to pass the hat for entire schools? And not just one or two, but dozens more? By proving the negro’s thrift and intelligence.” 21. p285:”Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing’s going to grow in this mean cold, but we can still have flowers.” “Valentine farm is a delusion. Who told you the negro deserved a place of refuge” Who told you that you had that right? Every minute of your life’s suffering has argued otherwise. By every fact of history, it can’t exist. This place must be a delusion, too. Yet here we are.” 22.p.293:”Mabel tripped over cypress root and went sprawling into the water. She staggered through the reeds to the island ahead and flattened on the ground. Didn’t know how long she had been running. Panting and tuckered out…On the bed of damp earth, her breathing slowed and that which separated herself from the swamp disappeared. She was free…. 23.p.295:”She could have made it farther-working Randall land had made her strong, strong in body if nothing else-but she stumbled onto a bed of soft moss and it fel right. She said. Here, and the swamp swallowed her up.” 24.p.306:”The blanket was still and raspy under her chin but she didn’t mind. She wondered where he escaped from , how bad it was, and how far he traveled before he put it behind him. Golden Sentence: 1.p.3: the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail 2.p.7:Your value determined your possibilities 3.p.100:The window in the examination room granted her a view of the configuration of the town and the verdant countryside for miles and miles. That men had built such a thing as this, a stepping-stone to heaven. 4.p.117:That’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies-steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better. 5.p118:how diminished the world became when you gained the proper distance 6.p.124:penned in dormitories that were like coops or hutches. 7.p.124: According to the law, most of them were still property, their names on pieces of paper in cabinets kept by the United States Government. 8.p.222:Like her mother, one thing the woman had passed on to her 9.p.223:People like you and your mother are the best of your race. The weak of your tribe have been weeded out. 10.p.195: They reached across the biblical rift for a selfish purpose. 11.p.240:The Declaration is like a map. You trust that it’s right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.” 12.p.246:Liberty make a body fertile 13. p.251:”Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.” 14.p293:”It made him silent and strong and fast, faster than any other picker in his gang.” 15.p.292:”Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death. 16.p.294:”The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse.” 17.p.305:”You are a sight. High in pitch, like a bird’s chirping.”
Underground Railroad Summery and Questions by Lydia The protagonist Cora’s grandmother, Ajarry, is kidnapped from Africa as a child and brought to America, where she is sold many times before ending up on Randall plantation. Ajarry has three husbands and five children, and the only one of the children that survives is Mabel, Cora’s mother. Ajarry dies of a brain hemorrhage while working in the cotton field. The narrative jumps to Cora’s adolescence—she is still living on Randall. Cora spends every Sunday tending to her garden, which she inherited from Mabel (who inherited it from Ajarry). After Mabel ran away, Cora became a “stray” and was placed in Hob, the cabin for “wretched” women. Soon after Cora was placed there, she had a confrontation with a man named Blake who built a wooden house for his dog in Cora’s garden. Cora destroyed the doghouse with a hatchet and cut off the dog’s tail. Soon after, she was gang-raped by four enslaved men. One day, the enslaved population on Randall is preparing a birthday feast for Jockey, an enslaved man who picks random days on which to celebrate his birthday. Before the feast, Cora talks to her friend Lovey, a kind and simple young woman who—unlike Cora—enjoys dancing. Just before the feast, a young man named Caesar pulls Cora aside and asks her to run away with him, an idea Cora dismisses as ludicrous. After the feast, the slaves dance and play music, but they’re interrupted by James and Terrance Randall, the brothers who own the plantation. The brothers force the slaves to dance for their entertainment and Terrance grows furious when a young boy, Chester, accidentally knocks wine onto Terrance’s shirt. As Terrance is about to hit Chester, Cora defends him, and both of them are brutally whipped as a result. Soon after Jockey’s feast, James Randall dies of kidney failure, which means that Terrance (the crueler brother) takes over the whole plantation. This causes a man named Big Anthony to run away, though Big Anthony is soon captured and tortured to death over a gruesome three-day period. After this, Cora agrees to run away with Caesar; he tells her that he is being assisted by Fletcher, a local shopkeeper who works for the underground railroad. The two set off in the night, and they soon realize that they are being followed by Lovey. They do not get far from the plantation before running into hog farmers who manage to capture Lovey. Cora is tackled by a young boy and she kills him with a rock. After Cora and Caesar find Fletcher, Fletcher introduces them to Lumbly, who houses an underground railroad station beneath his farm. They travel in a rickety car to South Carolina. When Mabel disappeared, she gave no indication to Cora that she was leaving. Old Randall hired Ridgeway, a notorious slave catcher, to find Mabel, but he was unable to do so. Ridgeway is the son of a blacksmith, Ridgeway Sr. who believed in a “Great Spirit” uniting all living things. As a teenager, Ridgeway becomes a patroller, terrorizing and abusing black people, before deciding to become a professional slave catcher. Ridgeway is tortured by his failure to capture Mabel and he swears he will track down Cora in her place. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson are a couple living in South Carolina with their two children, who are cared for by a black nanny called Bessie. Bessie sometimes takes the children to visit their father at his office in the Griffin Building, a 12-story building with an elevator. Bessie lives in dormitories supervised by white proctors, including Miss Lucy. It is eventually revealed that Bessie is, in fact, Cora, who (along with Caesar) assumed a fake identity in South Carolina with the assistance of a white saloon owner and underground railroad agent named Sam. Cora takes classes in literacy with Miss Handler, and she undergoes medical examinations at the local hospital. One night, there is a dormitory social at which Cora wears a pretty new dress and chats happily with Caesar. Although there is an underground railroad train coming in a few days, they decide to stay in South Carolina. Later that night, Cora sees a black woman running through the green in front of the dormitories screaming, “They’re taking away my babies!” This image haunts Cora. Soon, Cora is given a new job as a “type” in a museum. She poses in three different scenes representing different stages in the transatlantic slave trade: “Scenes from Darkest Africa,” “Life on the Slave Ship,” and “Typical Day on the Plantation.” At her next medical examination, Dr. Stevens suggests that Cora undergo sterilization, which horrifies her. Soon after, Sam informs her and Caesar that there are rumors that the doctors are not treating some of the black dormitory residents for syphilis so that the doctors can study the infection’s progression. Meanwhile, other residents are being forcibly sterilized in order to cull the black population. Shortly after, Cora has an interaction with Miss Lucy that causes her to fear that her true identity as a runaway slave may have been revealed. She goes to warn Sam, who tells Cora that Ridgeway is after her and hides her down on the underground railroad platform. After waiting in the dark, Cora realizes that on the other side of the door Sam’s house is on fire. Cora is brought to North Carolina by a teenage engineer on the underground railroad. Once there, Martin Wells discovers her on the platform and he is alarmed by her arrival, as the station is supposed to be closed. Martin shows Cora the Freedom Trail, a seemingly endless line of lynched black bodies left hanging on display, and he explains that black people are not allowed in North Carolina anymore. Martin lives with his wife, Ethel, and they hide Cora in their attic. They have a servant, Fiona, a young Irish woman who cannot know about Cora’s presence, lest she alert others and get Cora, Martin, and Ethel killed. Through a crack in the attic wall, Cora watches the Friday Festival, an event at which the local townspeople watch a minstrel show and then publically lynch a black person. The heat in the attic is so intense that Cora sometimes passes out, and she is given only very small amounts of water and food. She eventually gets sick, and Ethel cares for her, which marks a shift from Ethel’s previously hostile attitude. Soon after, patrollers arrive at the house and storm straight up to the attic. Among them is Ridgeway, who grabs Cora by the ankles and throws her down the stairs. Ridgeway takes Cora with him. As they drive away Martin and Ethel are stoned to death by the townspeople. Cora travels through Tennessee with Ridgeway, Ridgeway’s accomplices Homer and Boseman, and a captured runaway, Jasper, who won’t stop singing hymns. Homer is a 10-year-old black boy who serves as Ridgeway’s driver and bookkeeper. Although he is technically free, Homer mysteriously decides to stay with Ridgeway and he even voluntarily chains himself to Ridgeway’s wagon at night. Boseman, meanwhile, has been traveling with Ridgeway for three years and he wears a necklace of shriveled ears. Ridgeway eventually gets irritated by Jasper’s singing and shoots him. They travel through towns struck by wildfires and yellow fever. One evening, Ridgeway gives Cora a new dress to wear and takes her out for dinner. He informs Cora that Caesar was killed by a mob in South Carolina. After the dinner, Boseman attempts to rape Cora but is interrupted by Royal, Justin, and Red, three free black men who shoot Boseman and rescue Cora. Cora kicks Ridgway three times in the face before fleeing. The narrative jumps into the future, with Cora now living on Valentine farm, a free black community in Indiana. She is once again taking classes, and she shares a cabin with a woman named Sybil and Sybil’s daughter, Molly, with whom Cora has an affectionate bond. The farm is run by John Valentine, a white-passing freeborn black man, and his wife, Gloria. Visitors often come to the farm, including abolitionists, musicians, and poets. Cora, meanwhile, is being courted by Royal, who shows her a nearby underground railroad station. Cora spends most of her time in the farm’s library, and one day John joins her there to discuss the future of the farm. The residents are about to debate whether the community should move west or stay put and expel the runaways who live there. John tells Cora that he feels a sense of duty to help all black people, who he believes must look out for one another. The farm hosts a debate about the community’s future at which all residents are present. One of the oldest residents, Mingo, gives a speech advocating the expulsion of runaways and “criminals” and arguing that the only way to achieve “Negro uplift” is through embracing only the “best” members of the race. Elijah Lander, a biracial abolitionist and rhetorician, gives the next speech. Lander argues that Valentine farm may be a “delusion,” but it is a delusion that its residents must believe in. Just as Lander’s speech is coming to an end, the meeting is disrupted by Ridgeway and a gang of white men. They shoot Lander and Royal and drag off many others. Royal dies in Cora’s arms while telling her with a smile to escape via the underground railroad. Ridgeway captures Cora and demands that she lead him to the railroad station. The penultimate chapter describes Mabel’s life and her decision to run away. When Cora was born, Mabel was repeatedly raped by Moses, one of the black bosses on Randall. Cora had been born as a result of Mabel’s romantic affair, at the age of fourteen, with Grayson, a kind and confident man who died of fever before learning that Mabel was pregnant. When Mabel runs away, she is thrilled by the taste of freedom but she immediately decides that she must go back for Cora. However, on her way back to Randall she is bitten by a snake and dies, her body swallowed up by the swamp. Cora takes Ridgeway and Homer to the station. Just as they get to the stairs, though, Cora pulls her chains around Ridgway’s neck, which causes him to fall down the stairs. As he lies dying from his injuries, Ridgeway asks that Homer write down his last words. Cora, meanwhile, steps onto the handcar waiting in the station and begins slowly conveying herself to freedom, swinging at the tunnel with a pickax as she goes. After a while she grows too tired and, in between sleeps, continues her journey on foot. Eventually, she reaches the mouth of the tunnel and she can tell from the sun that she has made it north. She encounters a group of wagon drivers and sits up with an elderly black man named Ollie, who offers her food and water and suggests that they catch up on each other’s stories. Questions: 1. Do you like the book? Why? Also, among the characters who do you like most and why? it seems to me nothing to do with “like”, but something to do with understanding. I like Cora the best who is so brave and special. 2. The scenes on Randall’s plantation are horrific-how did the writing affect you as a reader? All the suffer depends on you, to turn it to be your motivation to grow or to be your poison to die P.291: Old Randall sold off Kate once her arm went numb and wasn’t fit for labor. Moses’s first whipping for stealing a potato, and his second whipping for idleness, when Connelly had the boy’s wounds washed out with hot pepper until he howled. None of the made Moses mean. It made him silent and strong and fast, faster than any other picker in his gang. p.292: Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The worldis mean from the start and gets meaner everyday. It uses you up until you only dream of death. 3. In the book p 141, in North Carolina, institutions like doctor’s offices & musicians that are supposed to help black uplift were corrupt and unethical. How do Cora’s challenges in N.C. mirror what America is still struggling with today? No matter where, when , sometimes, the lowly soul is nothing but a good for all the higher men to sell or use. P.135:”The Medical School got someone to admit the body snatcher.” p.137:”There had been a body shortage ever since the study of anatomy came into its own. ..Body snatcher charged for the body, then added a retainer, then a delivery fee.” 4." The treasure, of course, was the underground railroad. Some might call freedom, the dearest currency of all. " How does this quote shape the story for you? p.303:” underground railroad” is born of necessity and virtue, between the hammer ..and the anvil.” Railroad can make good use of it in a good man’s hand or be a weapon in a bad man’s hand. 5. How does Ethel’s backstory, her relationship with slavery and Cora’s use of her home affect you. P.195 When Martin went upstairs to help the girl it was not in the same way her father had gone upstairs, but both men came down transformed. They reached across the biblical rift for a selfish purpose. p.195:”Slavery as a moral issue never interested Ethel. If God had not meant for Africans to be enslaved, they wouldn’t be in chains. Destiny decides our right or wrong? We need to scarify ourselves to fight against the right! 6.When speaking of Valentine’s farm, Cora explains “Even if the adults were free of the shackles that held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. If the white men let them” What makes this so impactful both in the novel and today? p.117:That’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies-steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better. Without our own dream, there’s no difference from the animals’ life. 7. How do you feel about Cora’s mother’s decision to run away? How does your opinion of Cora’s mother change once you’ve learned about her fate? Cora’s mom pass on her great traits on her. Cora is more brave, clever, positive. 1. The writer Whitehead creates emotional instability for the reader: If things are going well, you get comfortable before a sudden tragedy. Why does this sense of fear do to you as you’re reading? p293:”It made him silent and strong and fast, faster than any other picker in his gang.” 9. This book emphasizes how slaves were treated as property and reduced to objects. Do you feel that you now have a better understanding of what slavery was like? p.278:”Don’t you know: white man ain’t going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.” p.284:”The Valentine farm had taken glorious steps into the future, he said. White benefactors supplied schoolbooks for their children-why not ask them to pass the hat for entire schools? And not just one or two, but dozens more? By proving the negro’s thrift and intelligence.” From the torture, the nigros also find the power that can’t be destroyed. 10.Does The Underground Railroad change the way you look at the history of America, especially in the time of slavery and abolitionism I feel more positive than before.
Conclusion: 1. Voltaire: Life is a shipwrack, we must not forget to sing in the lifeboat 2. p293:”It made him silent and strong and fast, faster than any other picker in his gang.” Nothing be beaten down, but ourselves 1. Voltaire: Life is a shipwrack, we must not forget to sing in the lifeboat 2. p293:”It made him silent and strong and fast, faster than any other picker in his gang.” Nothing be beaten down, but ourselves 3. Invisible underground railroad is longer than the visible railroad which could reach to the people who believe in great love, abolitionism.
Consultant Clive’s opinion: Today’s meeting, was the last of the calendar year. It was thought provoking and offered us a wide-ranging discussion. Our exceptional leader, Lydia worked hard to keep the show “on the tracks” and offered us and excellent and in depth review with the novel. It was clear from the discussion that the stories of those who fled slavery and those who helped them to freedom are among the most moving in America’s history. The Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Underground Railway, was a tale of sadness, pain and indignation. As our participants made clear, this story should also raise our curiosity and outrage at how people treated people and how the Underground Railroad really worked. The story is depressing but it also consistently works on all people regardless of nationality. It also teaches us a —or spares us from learning—about ourselves and America. Colson Whitehead has as his protagonist, a teenage girl named Cora who flees the Georgia plantation where she was born into slavery and heads north on a series of rickety subterranean trains—one- or two-car trains. His trains are driven by actual conductors and reached via caves or through trapdoors in buildings owned by sympathetic whites. Cora is a soul disconnected from her past who has nothing lose and doesn’t understand what freedom is. She runs and run, never knowing to where. Does she ever find freedom? We never learn. Although the story was powerful and overwhelming at times, it was also a tragic insight into a past that many don’t like to face. It is a part of history that holds a mirror up to the evil that people do to each other. Although we touched on slavery generally the key point that came out of the meeting was human greed and human evil and how the past affects the present. It was outstanding meeting and all the participants offered real insights into the world we live in today. Kathie’s Feedback: I have not read the Underground Railroad (although it is on my list), but I have been teaching all about 20th century genocide for my 11th grade World History class this term. This has included studying the 1910 Armenian genocide, the German Holocaust, the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, and before we are done, we will study about Darfur and now the Rayhinga problem in Myanmar. It has been a difficult subject, as you can imagine, and as I read Clive's summary of the discussion about the terrible and evil time of slavery in America, it is clear that human cruelty is found across the globe, and can spring forth at any time and anywhere. (Right now we are extra vigilant in the US because of who became our president. Believe me, he is a huge embarrassment for the majority of Americans.) I am also hoping that things are not spinning out of control for our friends in Cambodia. Let's hope that their democracy returns soon.
So I am wishing all of you a Merry Christmas season, and a Happy New Year. I am confident that by the time you have celebrated Chinese New Year, I will be back for our book club discussion in February.
Much affection to all, Kathie Related Reading: 1. Golson Whitehead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead 2. Underground Railroad Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/books/review-the-underground-railroad-colson-whitehead.html 3. Quidah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouidah 5. Life is a shipwrack-Voltaire: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/501729214707869929/ 6. Salisbury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury 7. Slave and free state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states_and_free_states (1775-1863) 8. Underground railroad review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/09/the-underground-railroad-colson-whitehead-revie-luminous-furious-wildly-inventive 9. Underground railroad review: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/books/review-the-underground-railroad-colson-whitehead.html 10. Discussion chart: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15ff8fc8b7c021a0 11. Slave in USA: https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BE%8E%E5%9C%8B%E5%A5%B4%E9%9A%B8%E5%88%B6%E5%BA%A6 12. Slavery in America - Black History - HISTORY.com http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery 13. Indiana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana 14. Virginia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia 15. 地下鐵路 (秘密結社) - 維基百科，自由的百科全書 https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E9%90%B5%E8%B7%AF_ Oklahoma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma |
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