Book No. 11 of 2020
This bleak yet yearning story doesn’t shy away from the sheer brutalism and suffering of slavery. It struck me, as I read unflinchingly violent passages about the horrors human beings have inflicted upon one another, that the depiction of slavery—in history books, popular literature, and historical sites—is too often sanitized, sugarcoated, or handwaved as being irrelevant to modern times. (Worst is when the scale of this suffering and dehumanization is justified by evoking other examples of suffering; please don’t be that asshole.) The Underground Railroad, with its naked depiction of violence and racism, forces you to reckon with the truth.
The manifestation of the Underground Railroad as a literal train system puts a fantastical-feeling, almost dreamlike layer over the story, and just as the railroad itself takes characters through states, safe houses and danger zones, you as the reader feel like you’re being transported through reality and fantasy. The conclusion is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
Similar Reads
For another book laden with symbolism that straddles the gulf between reality and transcendence, I recommend Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.
For a similarly bleak tale of the very human desire for escape, I recommend Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son.