The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

"Cora read the accounts of slaves who had been born in chains and learned their letters. Of Africans who had been stolen, torn from their homes and families, and described the miseries of their bondage and then their hair-raising escapes. She recognized their stories as her own. They were 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."
          -from the novel

I had wanted to read this novel since it was quite-a-while on the Bestseller List. Being a fan of historical fiction, it seemed like a must-read for me so I selected it for our Page Turners. As it turned out, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. Since it was an Oprah Book Club selection and a winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Literature, I am questioning my taste. My mediocre reaction may have had something to do with having just read A House Without Windows, a pretty intense story of an Afghan woman. The Underground Railroad made it seem pretty tame but maybe I just needed something lighter this month. I also thought the skipping around in settings was a bit confusing.

When I taught American history to 5th graders, we discussed the Underground Railroad, always stressing that it was NOT an actual railroad but a network of secret routes and safe houses used to help slaves escape to freedom in the North. In Colson's novel there are tunnels and railroads literally underground. That was difficult for me to imagine.

Protagonist Cora is a young woman in slavery on a cotton plantation in Georgia. The treatment is as barbaric and cruel as you would expect---very difficult to read and try not to visualize. When Caesar arrives from Virginia he tells Cora of the Underground Railroad and convinces her to run away with him. For a while they evade Ridgeway, a very hateful and relentless slave catcher, but the path to freedom is fraught with dangerous obstacles. They find good people along the way who could be called conductors and many of them are caught and brutally punished. The novel certainly portrays a ghastly time in United States history!

I will give the book a rating of 3. I didn't dislike it but I surely didn't love it. It will be interesting to see how our group reacts. More later...
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When the Page Turners met to discuss the book, I discovered I was not the only one who had a lukewarm reaction. Our average rating was 3.0 but 4 out of 15 participants gave it a 2. That hasn't happened in ages! We could agree that the writing was good, even lyrical in places, but felt the author had an "agenda." One member said the book was "didactic without being artful."

The questions we used, from the publisher, mentioned the "magical realism" of portraying the Underground Railroad as a literal railroad. We just thought it was weird and left some confusion as to what was fact and fiction in the novel. We also pretty much agreed that the characters were not fully developed and some of us felt there was no one to connect with emotionally. We thought the state-by-state structure of the story made it more difficult to follow but served to show the different kinds of heinous acts that were being carried out against people of color in this era.

Of course, we agreed that if the purpose of the novel was to show the horror of slavery, that mission was accomplished! I will end with a quote we thought was very significant to the theme: "The treasure, of course, was the underground railroad....Some might call freedom the dearest currency of all." How true, and something we take for granted!

Halsey Street by Naima Coster

"If she could have written more things she would have: how we do things we do not mean; we do evil things; if we see an open door, we will dart through it, before we lose our guts, no matter who is left behind, we will move at the chance to be free."
             -Mirella's thoughts, from the novel

This will likely be short since I didn't really care much for either main character nor did I identify with the setting. I am not sure why I finished the book but it seems to be a curse of mine "to finish what I start." I will give a rating of 2.

Penelope Grand, an aspiring artist without much success, moves from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn to spend more time with her ailing father, Ralph. Not only has Ralph suffered an accidental injury, he is seemingly depressed over the loss of his record shop and is drinking too much. The family home on Halsey Street is in a neighborhood being greatly changed by gentrification.

Woven into Penny's story is that of her mother, Mirella, who abandoned the family some years before. When Penny receives a letter from Mirella, now living in the Dominican Republic, seeking reconciliation, she struggles with a response.

I found both Mirella and Penny to be pretty self-absorbed which is the main reason I didn't get emotionally involved. Also the author used quite a bit of Spanish without always providing translation or even context to help with meaning.

It WAS ironic that I just saw the play "In the Heights" a couple of weeks ago and it centered around a main character longing to return to his homeland of the DR---Dominican Republic. There was Spanish spoken in the play, too, but the viewer could always get the gist. Thank goodness I enjoyed the play since I really didn't like Halsey Street.