The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad, a 2016 historical fiction novel by Colson Whitehead, chronicles the life of protagonist Cora, who is enslaved in antebellum Georgia. Interspersed in the narrative are chapters that follow other characters in the same way. These diverse characters—including Cora’s mother Mabel, an enslaved man named Caesar, and an enslaver named Ridgeway—have meaningful roles in Cora’s story.

The novel won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and its exploration of the US’s white supremacist roots places it in the company of other novels by Whitehead, including Harlem Shuffle (2021) and The Nickel Boys (2019). With its literalist interpretation of the historical Underground Railroad, The Underground Railroad also evidences Whitehead’s interest in speculative fiction, which likewise informs novels such as The Intuitionist (1999) and Zone One (2011).

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of the enslavement of Black Americans, anti-Black racism, medicalized torture, eugenics, lynching, and implied rape. In addition, the source text uses outdated and offensive slurs and epithets to refer to Black people, which are reproduced in this guide only in direct quotes.