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You know, the first chapter of the book is a, hopefully, realistic portrayal of a plantation in Georgia. And so they're buying slaves from slave owners and freeing them and giving them jobs and housing and schooling and giving them a fresh start.
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WHITEHEAD: Well, you know, they've thought about the problem of slavery and how to fix it. Why do they think of themselves that way? GROSS: So one of the stops Cora, the escaped slave, goes to on the Underground Railroad is South Carolina, where they think of themselves as very progressive. And I thought, well, what if every state our hero went through - as he or she ran North - was a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina - sort of like "Gulliver's Travels." The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state. And that's a premise, not that much of a story. And so the book took off from that childhood notion. And then you find out that it's not a literal subway, and you get a bit upset. And I was just sort of, you know, getting up from a nap or something (laughter) and thought, you know, what if the Underground Railroad was an actual railroad? You know, I think when you're a kid and you first hear about it in school or whatever, you imagine a literal subway beneath the earth. I first had the idea in the year 2000, and I was finishing up a long book called "John Henry Days," which had a lot of research. It took 16 years for me to finish the book. WHITEHEAD: Actually, I was pretty reluctant to immerse myself into that history. GROSS: That's from the opening of Colson Whitehead's new novel "The Underground Railroad." Why did you want to write a novel about slavery and escaped slaves? Had something happened in your life that made you want to immerse yourself in that history?
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Two yellow-haired sailors rode Ajarry out to the ship - humming, white skin like bone. Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue? This was the ship's final port of call before they crossed the Atlantic.
The captain staggered his purchases, rather than find himself with a cargo of singular culture and disposition. The ship called The Nanny was out of Liverpool and had made two previous stops along the Gold Coast. Able-bodied men and childbearing women fetched more than juveniles, making an individual accounting difficult. It was hard to say how much they paid for her in Ouidah, as she was part of a bulk purchase, 88 human souls for 60 crates of rum and gunpowder, the price arrived upon after the standard haggling in Coast English. Cora's grandmother was sold a few times on the trek to the fort, passed between slavers for cowry shells and glass beads. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn't keep the pace of the long march, the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she'd be reunited with her father down there in the dark. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two-by-two. The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. And the water dazzled after her time in the fort's dungeon. Cora's grandmother had never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon in the port of Ouidah. (Reading) The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.
Let's start with a reading from "The Underground Railroad."ĬOLSON WHITEHEAD: Sounds good. His new novel, "The Underground Railroad," begins with a prologue of sorts, telling the story of Cora's grandmother, Ajarry, who was kidnapped from her African village and shipped to America to become a slave.Ĭolson Whitehead, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Whitehead previously joined us on FRESH AIR to talk about his novel "Zone One," about a zombie plague - he loves science fiction - and his memoir "The Noble Hustle," about high-stakes poker. That's one of many liberties Colson takes with the actual past. This Underground Railroad, in Whitehead's reimagining, is literally a railroad with underground tracks and locomotives making stops in different states. But first, we'll listen back to Terry's interview from earlier this year with Colson Whitehead, who won the National Book Award for Fiction for his bestselling novel "The Underground Railroad." "The Underground Railroad" is about a slave named Cora who grows up on a Georgia plantation and, at the age of 15, escapes through the Underground Railroad. Later in the show, we'll replay an interview from longtime Georgia congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who co-wrote this year's winner in the Young People's Literature category. Today, we're saluting two authors whose works were honored this week as recipients of the National Book Award.
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I'm David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross.
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