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Street Roots • Jan. 6-12, 2017 Book Review Page 12 A horrific journey to the bottom of our soul BY ELLIOTT BRONSTEIN « ■ M S W K T IM tl ■ b im s « “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T ie Underground Railroad is bigger ‘T £ than its operators —' it’s all of you, JL too. to The small spurs, the big trunk lines.” Then Colson Whitehead was a child, he thought the Underground Railroad was an actual train that ran underground. Funny how those childhood confusions stick around. Decades later, the author of “The Intuitionist” and a MacArthur Fellow returned to that childhood fantasy to tell a fable of life in hell. There’s a once-upon-a-time quality to the novel’s opening pages, as Whitehead guides us through the initial back story of a woman named Ajarry sold in Ouidah by Dahomeyan raiders in the late 1800s. Soon — several decades and a few pages later — we are deep inside an American slave compound, a timeless succession of miseries meted out by white slave owners and the people who work for them. We meet 15-year-old Cora, the granddaughter of Ajarry, daughter of Mabel, who disappeared on a run for freedom when Cora was 11. Now Cora is a stray, living in the Hob, a shack for damaged women. More unspeakable miseries, a morass of depravity. And then when Cora is 15, she makes a run for it, too, with a man named m young dream, actual locomotives and flat cars rattle deep underground through endless tunnels, tunnels pulsing northward like arteries under the brown skin of the American heartland. The Underground Railroad that Cora rides is only there to take her in the general direction of a safe place that she and all other travelers have to take on faith — since no one ever returns to confirm it exists. Whitehead makes us see and feel what it’s like to be hunted and chased across an unfamiliar country with few roads, no maps and never knowing whom to trust — or rather, knowing you can’t trust anyone. And the stops and turns along her way unfold like successive rooms in an open-air House of Horrors. There’s no turning away from the violence and the threat, the tension of anticipated violence, like the opening scene in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” or Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas.” There’s no turning away because the horror is in every direction, including the North. What makes the novel work so well, what keeps you reading, is Whitehead’s deft , characterization and heart-stopping explanations. Listen to this: “Round white faces like an endless field of cotton bolls, all the same materials.” “Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.” travel s’from’CeorgSTfo1™ the Carolinas, from Tennessee to Indiana, long nimble fingers.” pursued by the implacable slave patroller, “The other patrollers were boys and men Ridgeway. Ridgeway pursues Cora to ease of bad character; the work attracted a type. his failure to snare Cora’s mother, who In another country they would have been vanished, possibly, into the North and criminals, hut this was America.” freedom. Whitehead’s writing bubbles over with The novel’s hook - the twist that makes small, strong touches like these. His voice anyone who hears it want to pick it up and fills in a delicate detail to help you see the start reading - is that in this parallel Story as real, but at the same time universe of the past, the Underground reminding you that this is a made-up tale Railroad is real: just like in Whitehead’s written by a hardcore dude. ■>OUCHNUT 1 p 14 3 [5 17 8 110 12 (14 16 17 ; 1^™ I 22 $W 3RD AVE. / 1501 NE DAVIS ST. PORTtAND OR 1. Fermentation agent 4. Have a bite 6. Tree fluid 7. Cake ingredient 8. . Three-ply cookie 9. Rook's henchman 12. Ground grain 14. The gift o f ___ 16. Tease or ridicule 17. Francis or Kevin? DOW N 1. Affirmaiîvel 2. Type of fritter 3. Analyze o r try 4. Cake ingredient 5. Très 8.. Deal 10. Potter's practice 11. Noshl 13. Late rapper; abbr. 15. ___appétit And this: “Unstoppable racial logic. If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn’t be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it’d still be his. If the white man wasn’t destined to take this new world, he wouldn’t own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent The American imperative.” Cora’s journey also takes her to a black- run farm in rural Indiana, an isolated haven from oppression, where she receives a glimpse of what life could be like if malevolence were not actively stalking them. Here the newly assembled group debates their age-old questions: to isolate themselves as a community or to trust in relations with the white townspeople. You probably want to know what happens next: Does the farm survive? Do Cora and Caesar make it North? Is Cora’s mother, Mabel, there to greet them? Does Ridgeway earn the death he deserves? Is fictional justice served? Gan we dream of a happy ending? Well, you know I can’t tell you that; you’ll just have to take the trip yourself. And if you’re white like me, be prepared to see yourself as the villain of the story. On this DarWTader. IfrlTO'MSSMt," we’re sieg heiling the Führer. It’s taken a while, but many of us are finally starting to comprehend the enormity of what happened and what keeps happening in and beneath this crazy land of ours. “The Underground Railroad” has tracks and tunnels pretty much everywhere now. We’d best get on board. Courtesy o f Street Roots sister paper Real Change News, Seattle. ( » P f l i i A C E R All Profits to Social Justice Cannabis with Benefits Panacea is a non-dividend, triple-bottom-line company. We commit 100% of profits to affordable housing and social justice. Everyone else is just sellin'weed. Recycle your cannabis money back to the community at Panacea. 6714 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, Oregon • 503-477-5083 www.panaceapdx.com . panacea_pdx Mon-Sat, 10-8, Sun 11-5
