PDA

View Full Version : ETS Book Club Book: Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad"



allegro
12-15-2016, 01:05 PM
Okay, a few of us have expressed interest in reading and discussing Colton Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad (https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Railroad-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/1524736309)."

Those who have expressed interest so far, besides moi:

elevenism
allegate
Louie_Cypher
Sarah K

Let's come up with a deadline date for purchase of the book. (I have it, already, on Kindle.)

Let's also discuss the pace in which we want to read, e.g. one chapter per two weeks, one chapter per month?

Note that the plan is to read the chapter, then discuss, and we shouldn't get ahead of the current chapters in the discussion.

If people plan to get this from the library, we'll need to keep that in mind as far as the schedule. BUT, whatever deadlines we come up with, we really need to adhere to them; the last several attempts at a book club were DESTROYED by people not adhering to deadlines.

I nominate myself to guide the discussions this time.

Louie_Cypher
12-15-2016, 02:08 PM
Okay, a few of us have expressed interest in reading and discussing Colton Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad (https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Railroad-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/1524736309)."

Those who have expressed interest so far, besides moi:

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475)
@allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)
@Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775)

Let's come up with a deadline date for purchase of the book.

Let's also discuss the pace in which we want to read, e.g. one chapter per two weeks, one chapter per month?

Note that the plan is to read the chapter, then discuss, and we shouldn't get ahead of the current chapters in the discussion.

If people plan to get this from the library, we'll need to keep that in mind as far as the schedule. BUT, whatever deadlines we come up with, we really need to adhere to them; the last several attempts at a book club were DESTROYED by people not adhering to deadlines.

I nominate myself to guide the discussions this time. ok i'm on board.

Sarah K
12-15-2016, 06:02 PM
I'm in! I bought it on Amazon today.

elevenism
12-16-2016, 03:56 AM
i have it too.

also: @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) if we read only one chapter per month, i will have forgotten the first chapter by the time we get to the third :P

So i guess my vote is for the shorter end of the spectrum when it comes to pace.

allegate
12-16-2016, 04:16 PM
Also at that pace I think most libraries would hate you after awhile. ;)

allegro
12-16-2016, 06:32 PM
I only recommended that if people are sloooooooooow readers, heh (and I was kinda being sarcastic)

allegate and Louie_Cypher, do you have the book? Are we ready to set a start date?

Louie_Cypher
12-16-2016, 06:48 PM
just got it today i am ready
-louie

allegro
12-16-2016, 07:11 PM
Awesome. allegate, are you ready?

allegro
12-16-2016, 07:11 PM
Let's get this started by watching this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ApSXusbZDU

allegro
12-16-2016, 07:30 PM
For those who have not read Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, this might help for our discussion and analysis: CLICK HERE (https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/book-summary)

Sarah K
12-16-2016, 07:35 PM
Mine arrived today, too. Gotta love that one day free shipping on some things!

elevenism
12-16-2016, 10:19 PM
Ooooh this won the national book award. This cat is a writer​ then.
So okay like after watching the video, this is magical realism used to link different historical fiction type elements, perhaps used to make a statement about contemporary issues?

(i'm sure that's a reductive analysis considering all of the buzz surrounding this thing, but this is the first i have heard of it and thus my first impression)

allegro
12-16-2016, 10:49 PM
Sounds like a good impression; let's find out! :-)

How about if we all start reading this tomorrow and read the first Chapter, "Ajarry," and begin discussing it ... say ... ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20TH??

Is everybody cool with that?

* Read Chapter One "Ajarry" beginning NOW
* Begin discussing on December 20th, Tuesday


elevenism, Sarah K, allegate, Louie_Cypher

elevenism
12-16-2016, 11:08 PM
i will read it now. right after i make sure i understand all this new nin business properly, but yes, i will read it tonight.

allegro
12-16-2016, 11:12 PM
Well, yeah and I am working on Christmas and Holiday stuff too but I'll fit it in; if anyone is having problems with the deadline, say so and we can extend it since it IS a busy time of year.

Louie_Cypher
12-17-2016, 08:24 AM
yes let's set a date
-louie

allegro
12-17-2016, 09:39 AM
yes let's set a date
-louie

We did. Look 3 posts up. Read Chapter One now, we discuss it this upcoming Tuesday.

Louie_Cypher
12-18-2016, 08:41 AM
starting today literally starting page one right now.
-louie

elevenism
12-18-2016, 08:45 AM
i read the chapter. i had a really hard time not reading ahead, but i want to do this right.

allegro
12-18-2016, 11:02 AM
I had to go to a ballet last night, I'll start sometime today (after vacuuming the friggin' house)

it's hard to tell how LONG the chapters are with a Kindle; if these are short chapters, maybe we can do two at a time?

Louie_Cypher
12-18-2016, 11:58 AM
We did. Look 3 posts up. Read Chapter One now, we discuss it this upcoming Tuesday.enjoyable so far, was a little nervous when it was an \Oprah book club but very enjoyable so far
-l-louie

elevenism
12-18-2016, 12:12 PM
@allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76), i THINK the second chapter is quite a bit longer than the first (and i'm guessing the subsequent chapters are too.) I think the first chapter was meant to be kind of a jarring little acclimatization. (acclimation? you know what i mean :P )
It said that the first chapter was "4 minutes" long, and the second was like "1 hour 50 min."
I don't fully understand how it calculates this yet. Maybe someone with the actual book can give us some insight here?

But yeah, the first chapter seemed to be about 10 pages long.

allegro
12-18-2016, 12:46 PM
@allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76), i THINK the second chapter is quite a bit longer than the first (and i'm guessing the subsequent chapters are too.) I think the first chapter was meant to be kind of a jarring little acclimatization. (acclimation? you know what i mean :P )
It said that the first chapter was "4 minutes" long, and the second was like "1 hour 50 min."
I don't fully understand how it calculates this yet. Maybe someone with the actual book can give us some insight here?

But yeah, the first chapter seemed to be about 10 pages long.

Thanks. Good to know. Yeah, Kindle has this calculation of estimated time-to-read based on the average reader. So ....

BASED ON THIS INFORMATION ...

I suggest we continue on and ALSO READ CHAPTER 2, and let's move the "discussion" deadline to to THURSDAY DECEMBER 22ND.

Sarah K, elevenism, allegate, elevenism

allegro
12-18-2016, 12:47 PM
Also, here is a handy Book Club Guide that I ripped off from Oprah, that we can keep in mind as we read this book:


BOOK CLUB GUIDE

1. How does the depiction of slavery in The Underground Railroad compare to other depictions in literature and film?
2. The scenes on Randall’s plantation are horrific—how did the writing affect you as a reader?
3. In North Carolina, institutions like doctor’s offices and museums that were supposed to help ‘black uplift’ were corrupt and unethical. How do Cora’s challenges in North Carolina mirror what America is still struggling with today?
4. Cora constructs elaborate daydreams about her life as a free woman and dedicates herself to reading and expanding her education. What role do you think stories play for Cora and other travelers using the underground railroad?
5. “The treasure, of course, was the underground railroad... Some might call freedom the dearest currency of all.” How does this quote shape the story for you?
6. How does Ethel’s backstory, her relationship with slavery and Cora’s use of her home affect you?
7. What are your impressions of John Valentine’s vision for the farm?
8. When speaking of Valentine’s Farm, Cora explains “Even if the adults were free of the shackles that held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. If the white men let them.” What makes this so impactful both in the novel and today?
9. What do you think about Terrance Randall’s fate?
10. How do you feel about Cora’s mother’s decision to run away? How does your opinion of Cora’s mother change once you’ve learned about her fate?
11. Whitehead creates emotional instability for the reader: if things are going well, you get comfortable before a sudden tragedy. What does this sense of fear do to you as you’re reading?
12. Who do you connect with most in the novel and why?
13. How does the state-by-state structure impact your reading process? Does it remind you of any other works of literature?
14. The book emphasizes how slaves were treated as property and reduced to objects. Do you feel that you now have a better understanding of what slavery was like?
15. Why do you think the author chose to portray a literal railroad? How did this aspect of magical realism impact your concept of how the real underground railroad worked?
16. Does The Underground Railroad change the way you look at the history of America, especially in the time of slavery and abolitionism?

SOME MORE:


Discussion Questions:

Why do you think the author chose a female for the main character?
How did you feel about the historical facts being changed for the sake of the story here?
How does fear affect people?
What role does religion play in this novel?
How is the Hob represented outside of the plantation?
Do you think there was anywhere truly safe to escape to in these times?
Discuss branding, literally and figuratively. How are the former slaves branded?
In what way do blacks become equals to whites in this novel?
What did you suspect happened to Mabel, Cora’s mother?
Why is the character Homer important? Why do you think he stays with Ridgeway?
Discuss some of the discussions that took place on the Valentine farm.
Discuss the role of those who helped slaves escape via the underground railroad and the risks taken.

allegate
12-20-2016, 11:44 AM
Alright, we gotta talk about these "chapters".


9 Ajarry
15 Georgia
54 Ridgeway
62 South Carolina
94 Stevens
100 North Carolina
132 Ethel
137 Tennessee
158 Caesar
163 Indiana
198 Mabel
203 The NorthThere are short chapters (8 pages here, 5 pages there) sandwiched between large chapters (39 pages, 32 pages). Maybe it should be two-chapter groupings every time?

allegro
12-20-2016, 07:23 PM
Alright, we gotta talk about these "chapters".

There are short chapters (8 pages here, 5 pages there) sandwiched between large chapters (39 pages, 32 pages). Maybe it should be two-chapter groupings every time?

Is that the page number beginning for each chapter, allegate?

Yes, I agree two chapter groupings each time.

How long do we want per grouping? A week? Five days?

Is everybody ready to start discussing this THURSDAY evening?

Or do we want to keep reading a few more chapters and then discuss?

elevenism, Sarah K, Louie_Cypher

Sarah K
12-20-2016, 08:28 PM
I'm finishing up my LAST FINAL PROJECT tonight. So I plan on reading the shorter chapter tonight, and then reading the longer one at work tomorrow(and maybe Thursday evening).

allegro
12-20-2016, 09:10 PM
I'm finishing up my LAST FINAL PROJECT tonight. So I plan on reading the shorter chapter tonight, and then reading the longer one at work tomorrow(and maybe Thursday evening).

Since you have the school final stuff weighing on you, Sarah, and we have Christmas, how about if we read THREE chapters and we all discuss sometime next week AFTER CHRISTMAS IS OVER?

Say, Tuesday, December 27th?

So we'll all have the first three chapters done, discuss on 12/27?

What say you all?

This is a pretty hectic time.

elevenism
12-20-2016, 09:26 PM
@allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , i can read it however.
I'm easy.

So whatever you, @Sarah K (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3236) , @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r and @Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775) wish to do is cool by me. I should have no problem doing the reading.

allegate
12-21-2016, 10:47 AM
Is that the page number beginning for each chapter, @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)?

Yes, I agree two chapter groupings each time.

How long do we want per grouping? A week? Five days?

Is everybody ready to start discussing this THURSDAY evening?

Or do we want to keep reading a few more chapters and then discuss?

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), @Sarah K (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3236), @Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775)

Yeah. I took the book off my kindle and converted it to PDF so I could read it at work and look busy. :rolleyes:

Almost finished with the second chapter, and as short as the 'every other chapter' chapters are three should be easy enough.

allegro
12-21-2016, 11:16 AM
Yeah. I took the book off my kindle and converted it to PDF so I could read it at work and look busy. :rolleyes:

Almost finished with the second chapter, and as short as the 'every other chapter' chapters are three should be easy enough.

Awesome, thanks for the info, that will be really helpful to us all!

Let's all go for three and discuss next week, then.

elevenism
12-22-2016, 07:49 AM
i had all kinds of shit ready to discuss for chapter one-
historical significance of places, lexical themes, etc. :P

i REALLY fucking miss english class

allegate
12-22-2016, 09:48 AM
Shit...all I have are passages that I liked and wonderment at how chapter 2 ended.

Not much of a history buff so the 'changes' that are there don't stick out too much. I mean, I know there wasn't an actual railroad, give me some credit. :) But the makeup of the towns and such...nope.

allegro
12-22-2016, 01:28 PM
i had all kinds of shit ready to discuss for chapter one-
historical significance of places, lexical themes, etc. :P

i REALLY fucking miss english class
elevenism, take notes, okay? Do you have a word processing program? Type your notes in there, and then copy and paste them into here on discussion day?

allegate, have you ever read Swift's "Gulliver's Travels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver's_Travels)?" This is allegedly set up to be an homage to that book as far as each "state" being a different voyage.

I'll just leave that here for now, keep that in mind. :-)

Since people are itching to get to a discussion, here, I move that we begin discussing the first three chapters the day after Christmas, on Monday, December 26th.

Again, if you want, take notes, copy and paste into here at that point.

allegro
12-22-2016, 01:40 PM
Also be mindful of this book as compared to other pieces of American slave narrative, e.g. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick_Douglass,_an_Am erican_Slave)," and "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_in_the_Life_of_a_Slave_Girl)" by Harriet Ann Jacobs.

By the way, I HIGHLY recommend both of the above books.

Jacobs book on Kindle HERE (https://www.amazon.com/Incidents-Life-Slave-Civil-Classics-ebook/dp/B00R23KFWQ/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=).

Douglass book on Kindle HERE (https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Life-Frederick-Douglass-ebook/dp/B0083ZQSEG/ref=pd_sbs_351_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0083ZQSEG&pd_rd_r=G4R0WB35WRV70N19SHZM&pd_rd_w=1iAaO&pd_rd_wg=SBYbc&psc=1&refRID=G4R0WB35WRV70N19SHZM).

Also, this speech by Sojourner Truth:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq3AYiRT4no

allegate
12-22-2016, 02:50 PM
@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), take notes, okay? Do you have a word processing program? Type your notes in there, and then copy and paste them into here on discussion day?

@allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739), have you ever read Swift's "Gulliver's Travels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver's_Travels)?" This is allegedly set up to be an homage to that book as far as each "state" being a different voyage.

I'll just leave that here for now, keep that in mind. :-)

Since people are itching to get to a discussion, here, I move that we begin discussing the first three chapters the day after Christmas, on Monday, December 26th.

Again, if you want, take notes, copy and paste into here at that point.
I have, and that makes a lot of sense given how chapter two ends and chapter four starts.

I'm pretty sure I've read the Frederick Douglass book many moons ago back in middle school, but I'll read it again and the other as well. Help me from reading too far ahead, I guess!

allegro
12-22-2016, 04:01 PM
Also, in "The Underground Railroad," there is a lot of symbolism of "things to come" juxtaposed with the things from the past, which is why this book is not 100% historical.

elevenism
12-22-2016, 07:07 PM
Shit...all I have are passages that I liked and wonderment at how chapter 2 ended.

Not much of a history buff so the 'changes' that are there don't stick out too much. I mean, I know there wasn't an actual railroad, give me some credit. :) But the makeup of the towns and such...nope.

'tis part of what i love about this kindle.
you can highlight words and phrases and look at the dictionary and wikipedia ;)

elevenism
12-22-2016, 07:10 PM
also, my preliminary discussion may be limited as there are going to be 4 extra people in the house and everybody congregates in here where the computer is, and they have tablets that eat up the wifi so my laptop may or may not work :(

allegro
12-22-2016, 07:30 PM
also, my preliminary discussion may be limited as there are going to be 4 extra people in the house and everybody congregates in here where the computer is, and they have tablets that eat up the wifi so my laptop may or may not work :(

Tell them it's Book Club night and lay off!! :-)

Or tether off your cell.

When are they arriving and when are they leaving?

allegro
12-22-2016, 07:31 PM
Now I know how my college Profs felt. Delays delays delays.

This will be the ONLY time we delay the schedule. Actually, I'm thinking of moving it backward again. We can get the discussion going and others can join in as they can fit into their schedule. I'm highlighting parts of the chapters for discussion.

And I can bake Christmas cookies at the same time.

allegro
12-22-2016, 07:36 PM
'tis part of what i love about this kindle.
you can highlight words and phrases and look at the dictionary and wikipedia ;)
HIGHLIGHTING is what I really love.

Speaking of highlighting, I'll just leave this here (a reference from Chapter One):

http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Jan/18/are-black-people-cursed-curse-ham/

elevenism
12-22-2016, 09:42 PM
Tell them it's Book Club night and lay off!! :-)

Or tether off your cell.

When are they arriving and when are they leaving?

they will be here in a few hours and i'm not sure when they will leave, but i will find a way to work around it.

also allegro , if nothing else, my mom got a Fire tablet when L and i got the paperwhites and it runs really well even with low wifi. i will borrow that if i have to. :)

allegro
12-24-2016, 12:55 AM
I just found out that if I read the book on my iPad, I can see page numbers.

allegro
12-26-2016, 09:18 PM
Okay, how far has everybody read, so far?

I just started "Ethel" (I'm on page 192).

Sarah K
12-27-2016, 10:59 AM
I got sick over the long weekend and instead of reading, I slept.

But hopefully I am caught up by the next discussion day!

allegate
12-27-2016, 11:17 AM
Okay, how far has everybody read, so far?

I just started "Ethel" (I'm on page 192).
Took the weekend off because of travel and stuff but I'm starting North Carolina today.

At the end of Georgia, when she gets out and says she's looking at skyscrapers I was totally (even though the book was dropping historical hints as to what time it's set) hoping for a slavery in the future, the South didn't lose the Civil War kind of story.

allegro
12-27-2016, 11:29 AM
HEY BY THE WAY, ALL, I read this REALLY interesting article saying there was no Underground Railroad in the south, at all, etc.:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/the-perilous-lure-of-the-underground-railroad

allegro
12-27-2016, 11:36 AM
Well, you guys just wake me up when y'all are caught up, okay?

I'm just going to keep reading ahead.

elevenism
12-27-2016, 01:41 PM
Well, you guys just wake me up when y'all are caught up, okay?

I'm just going to keep reading ahead.
Damnit allegro ,
i would have long since finished the book if i had known that reading ahead was permissible.
i've read the new anne rice book and The Girl With Curious Hair by DFW waiting to be told when to read more :P

allegro
12-27-2016, 01:43 PM
Damnit allegro ,
i would have long since finished the book if i had known that reading ahead was permissible.
i've read the new anne rice book and The Girl With Curious Hair by DFW waiting to be told when to read more :P

I think I said earlier that we can go ahead and read; hell, nobody's following the "rules," anyway, it's all been delayed by a week, do whatever you want, seriously. I am.

I suspect it's all going to be delayed indefinitely.

Or, you and I will be discussing it. We were supposed to start discussing it yesterday but that never happened.

I'm kinda over this book club thing already, truth be told.

elevenism
12-28-2016, 10:20 AM
We were supposed to start discussing it yesterday but that never happened.

I'm kinda over this book club thing already, truth be told.

This is why my Professor friends HATE being Professors, LOL. I'm just not the whip-cracking type.

I also hate surprises, so I already researched the ending of the book, heh.

I was the kid who found all of the hidden Christmas gifts and carefully unwrapped them, saw what I was getting, then re-wrapped them and put them all back and acted sufficiently SURPRISED on Christmas morning.

i was waiting to be told when to discuss it. i was trying to do it right.
i think maybe we shouldn't have started it around xmas. it still might work :/

it says there are 8 "hours" left or whatever which means 3 or 4 for me so i can be done with it post fucking haste if you want to do it that way.

allegro
12-28-2016, 01:02 PM
i was waiting to be told when to discuss it. i was trying to do it right.
i think maybe we shouldn't have started it around xmas. it still might work :/

it says there are 8 "hours" left or whatever which means 3 or 4 for me so i can be done with it post fucking haste if you want to do it that way.


I'm in "Indiana" right now, Cora is living with the Maroons.

Let's just read and you and I can start discussing, dude.

With zero spoiler warning, MUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA :D

Sarah K
12-28-2016, 01:14 PM
DON'T GIVE UP ON IT

I think it's a good idea. I wasn't anticipating getting sick and wanting to die this weekend. But I'm reading on my lunch right now, and think I'm starting to feel a bit better today, so I plan on reading for a couple of hours tonight before I drug myself up to get some sleep!

allegro
12-28-2016, 02:20 PM
Sarah K, I hope you feel better. I think once you start reading this book, you'll find it's pretty hard to put down. :p

allegate
12-28-2016, 02:43 PM
I'm the quiet one in class that waits and listens to everyone and then puts in two cents worth based on the conversation. I'm not very good at initiating. :/

allegro
12-28-2016, 03:10 PM
I'm the quiet one in class that waits and listens to everyone and then puts in two cents worth based on the conversation. I'm not very good at initiating. :/

Fair enough, we'll keep that in mind. :)

elevenism
12-28-2016, 06:36 PM
also, allegro , i know you are very introverted, but you are quite outspoken and confident on this forum.
Tis why i looked forward to you leading the discussion.

allegro
12-30-2016, 02:45 AM
Well, I've finished the book. (couldn't put it down until I finished it, hence the late post. Egad.)

How you doing, elevenism?

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:09 AM
Well, I've finished the book. (couldn't put it down until I finished it, hence the late post. Egad.)

How you doing, @elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475)?
Can finish today, if that's the plan.

allegro
12-30-2016, 11:14 AM
Can finish today, if that's the plan.

No real "plan" anymore.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:18 AM
No real "plan" anymore.
i
want
plan.

allegro
12-30-2016, 11:18 AM
i
want
plan.

Go ahead and make one, then.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:21 AM
i have been reading other things because i thought we might formulate a new plan.
But i will finish it now since that sounds like the "plan."
allegro , you are the one who was gonna make plan :(

allegro
12-30-2016, 11:21 AM
i have been reading other things because i thought we might formulate a new plan.
But i will finish it now since that sounds like the "plan."

Sounds like a plan.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:22 AM
Sounds like a plan.
Okay, everybody, this is the new plan.

allegro
12-30-2016, 11:23 AM
You wanna start discussing it tonight? Too soon?

I'll add to this thread:

OKAY DON'T READ THIS THREAD IF YOU AREN'T DONE WITH THE BOOK YET AND YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS BECAUSE WE ARE GONNA START DISCUSSING THIS BOOK NOW AND THE THREAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:27 AM
You wanna start discussing it tonight? Too soon?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps i should see what is going on here before i commit.
One thing i can do for certain is read the thing in the next few hours.

But discussion tonight is a distinct possibility.

also @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) do we know how far @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r has read? he seemed like someone who does the reading...

allegro
12-30-2016, 11:29 AM
I don't know anything more than what you know, here.

I believe it's allegate.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:34 AM
I don't know anything more than what you know, here.

I believe it's @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739). i think that allegater is funnier.

also Sarah K sounded sincere and i thought she was your homegirl.

Perhaps we shouldn't be so nihlistic about book club?

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:35 AM
Okay @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r @Sarah K (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3236) @Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775)

Where Is Ev-Ree-Bah-Tee? (that's the TFA version)

on a side note allegro , allegate is an interesting word. Adding an r to it, well, i'm fairly goofy if you haven't figured that out yet :P

elevenism
12-30-2016, 11:38 AM
okay allegro so are we gonna do like chapter by chapter analysis?
or are we going to discuss the book as a whole?

allegate
12-30-2016, 12:08 PM
Alrighty...wife was feeling ill yesterday so I had to work from home/take a half day because of the Christmas break to spend time with my son. Great day, but I'm not online if I'm home.

Anyway, I could finish the book either today or tomorrow, I'm about halfway through but was taking a break to read the other two stories @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) mentioned.

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/members/2475-elevenism) as far as the extra 'r': way way back in 95 when I first got on the internet I had to pick a username. I had just been accepted at Allegheny College and their mascot is...wait for it...an alligator.

http://alleghenygators.com/images/responsive/main_logo.png

And it just so happens to be an Italian word meaning "attached". Which is weird because I'm not Italian and I thought I had a made-up word.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 12:21 PM
Alrighty...wife was feeling ill yesterday so I had to work from home/take a half day because of the Christmas break to spend time with my son. Great day, but I'm not online if I'm home.

Anyway, I could finish the book either today or tomorrow, I'm about halfway through but was taking a break to read the other two stories @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) mentioned.

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/members/2475-elevenism) as far as the extra 'r': way way back in 95 when I first got on the internet I had to pick a username. I had just been accepted at Allegheny College and their mascot is...wait for it...an alligator.

http://alleghenygators.com/images/responsive/main_logo.png

And it just so happens to be an Italian word meaning "attached". Which is weird because I'm not Italian and I thought I had a made-up word.
@allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r
it's also a rarely used english word, a verb meaning to make an allegation.
I thought you must be a lawyer or something.
And yes, it is an italian adjective, feminine plural, for enclosed/attached.

I love words, so i looked all this up when i first saw your username.

Okay @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r is on board. He didn't finish the book because he was doing the suggested corollary reading.

So i vote that we wait until he finishes it.

Also, i can read this one of two ways. I can be finished with it in like 3 hours, but that's if i just plow through it.
If i am going to take notes, it will take more like the 8 hours the kindle claims it will take.

Furthermore, due to my fallow drug habit, i am MUCH more functional every OTHER day. Today i am 100%, tomorrow i won't be, on the first i will, etc.

So if i am making the plan, let's discuss it on the night of New Year's Day.
Sarah K ? Louie_Cypher ? Are you guys down?

allegro
12-30-2016, 12:45 PM
I'm making a big dinner the night of New Year's Day. It's actually a "holiday."

elevenism, you can highlight the areas of note in the book, and then pull up all of the highlighted areas via Kindle on the computer HERE via your Amazon account (https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights).

And you can copy-and-paste highlighted text from the book into this thread, for example:


Alice tossing the heads into the slop bucket. She staggered into the sunlight. Did the woman think her food tainted? Is that how Alice had got rid of everything Cora had contributed these past five years, treated every turnip knob and bunch of sour greens? Had it started with Cora, or Mabel, or her grandmother? There was no point in confronting the woman. Alice had been beloved of Randall, and now James Randall, who had grown tall on her mincemeat pies.


I have 54 highlighted passages, LOL.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 12:49 PM
I'm making a big dinner the night of New Year's Day. It's actually a "holiday."

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), you can highlight the areas of note in the book, and then pull up all of the highlighted areas via Kindle on the computer HERE via your Amazon account (https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights).
oh, word? thanks!

So what do you propose we do? i don't want to leave out @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r

I can discuss even when not 100%. So the question, for me, comes down to this: can allegate be ready to discuss tomorrow?

elevenism
12-30-2016, 12:52 PM
I'm making a big dinner the night of New Year's Day. It's actually a "holiday."

@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), you can highlight the areas of note in the book, and then pull up all of the highlighted areas via Kindle on the computer HERE via your Amazon account (https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights).

And you can copy-and-paste highlighted text from the book into this thread, for example:




I have 54 highlighted passages, LOL.
that's seriously fucking awesome. I have highlighted passages but didn't yet know how it worked.

allegro
12-30-2016, 12:53 PM
We'll discuss the book as a whole, I'll begin the discussion whenever we start.

allegro
12-30-2016, 12:54 PM
that's seriously fucking awesome. I have highlighted passages but didn't yet know how it worked.

It came in REALLY handy for some stuff when I was in school, that's for sure, especially for thesis essays that required cited text.

I learned pretty quickly that highlighting text helps to really "absorb" the text. (Taking notes is even better, but this isn't a class, we ain't getting any GRADES or anything.)

note that you can even ADD NOTES near each highlighted text online.

My friends are in book clubs where you read the book then show up at a meeting and sit around drinking wine and eating appetizers and you discuss the book.

This is that, minus the wine and pâté

elevenism
12-30-2016, 12:56 PM
So what say ye allegate ? It comes down to this-your fist-your kiss. :P

Also, where are Sarah K and Louie_Cypher ?

Sarah K said DONT GIVE UP in all caps like that, remember, w/r/t this book club.

Also i wish someone would make ME a big dinner for...anything, ever.

allegro
12-30-2016, 01:00 PM
Hey, if you were here you could come over for dinner, I am making a slow-cooked smoked butt, it cooks all day for, like, 9 hours in molasses, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and all kinds of other good stuff, and that counteracts the saltiness of the smoked pork shoulder, and it's melt-in-your-mouth (it's G's favorite) and the house smells LIKE HEAVEN all day. And sweet potatoes, and warm rolls, and ... SOMETIMES I cook black-eyed peas in with the slowed-cooked smoked butt all day long, too, and OMG.

Shit, I gotta go eat lunch ...

This book, man, I wonder if this guy is gonna do a SEQUEL or something ...

elevenism
12-30-2016, 01:04 PM
Hey, if you were here you could come over for dinner, I am making a slow-cooked smoked butt, it cooks all day for, like, 9 hours in molasses, syrup, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and all kinds of other good stuff, and that counteracts the saltiness of the smoked pork shoulder, and it's melt-in-your-mouth (it's G's favorite) and the house smells LIKE HEAVEN all day. And sweet potatoes, and warm rolls, and ...

Shit, I gotta go eat lunch ...
Sigh. I wish that i could! it sounds heavenly.
When my sister in law is here, she DOES make amazing meals. Her cooking is the best thing i have ever eaten, and she usually does 3 meals a day. She is this incredible natural artist who can paint, sculpt, draw, and i think her cooking talent is yet another manifestation of this artistry.
-end drift :)

allegro
12-30-2016, 01:06 PM
Cooking is a zen experience for us, it's very much like art. (I have a graphic arts minor.) Creative and zen-like.

Go read the book.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 01:08 PM
Oh, goddamnit, tomorrow is fucking NYE.
I don't paricipate in holidays or like anniversaries of people's deaths and such, but i know that most people do.
So should we wait to hear from Sarah K and Louie_Cypher ?

If we discuss it like on the 2nd, it wouldn't REALLY be totally fucking off our deadlines, because we were originally going to do it a piece at a time. If everyone can be done by then, or even the 3rd, we can make this a success and do it again :)

elevenism
12-30-2016, 01:10 PM
Cooking is a zen experience for us, it's very much like art. (I have a graphic arts minor.) Creative and zen-like.

Go read the book.
Yes Ma'am.
It is just to the right of the laptop :)

allegro
12-30-2016, 01:17 PM
If we discuss it like on the 2nd, it wouldn't REALLY be totally fucking off our deadlines, because we were originally going to do it a piece at a time. If everyone can be done by then, or even the 3rd, we can make this a success and do it again :)

Yeah, tomorrow night is NYE, G and I are actually gonna stay home and watch TV and eat food and stuff.

Dude, let's just get this going and they can join in whenever, I believe that is what they suggested. If we wait, we will forget wtf we read and won't be able to really discuss it. We have put this off for over a week of reading, already. So the sooner we can get the discussion going, the fresher it will be in our heads.

My husband has to work the morning of New Year's Day and I'll just be watching the Rose Bowl Parade so you and I can start. allegate might be able to join in by then. Or, Monday nights G plays WoW and raids (yeah yeah I know).

Louie_Cypher
12-30-2016, 06:02 PM
o.k. i'm ready need to clear my head a little, not a big fan of the holiday's, my in-law's are huge. republican's trump suporter's and fox news believer's, so before i can discuss rhis, this book especially this book. I need to decompress a little, i hope that is understandable.
-louie

elevenism
12-30-2016, 07:13 PM
Instead of reading at my usual rapid pace, i have been reading SLOW, because i only slept four hours last night and realized that i had been dozing off while reading these past few hours. Also i fucked up and spent too much time on the internet.
But now i am knocking out my regular 2-3 minutes per page, with "6 hours left," so i should be done in like 3 hours.

SO. I will have the book finished tonight, but probably not in time to discuss (unless you will be up late @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) )
If tomorrow is not an option, i am all for getting started sunday morning.
But if we have even a little time tomorrow, i'd be down with that too.
Monday night works too.

@Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775) , so your in laws are, let me tell you, yuge trumps supporters? YUGE? :P Will you be mentally ready to discuss by sunday morning?
@allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739)r , will you be finished by Sunday morning? Sarah K ?

elevenism
12-30-2016, 08:34 PM
allegro i REALLY want this to work!

Louie_Cypher
12-30-2016, 08:37 PM
sunday morning would be great
-louie

allegro
12-30-2016, 09:38 PM
Or Monday night. Let's play it by ear.

But everybody has to REALLY TRY to finish this book. Not put it off.

It's not really THAT long.

I TRIED to get everybody to agree if we should delay the start of reading this, until after the holidays or whatever, but nobody rang any alarms until we had already STARTED reading (per agreement from everyone). I should have known better.

:)

Ping me when you all are done.

elevenism
12-30-2016, 09:44 PM
Or Monday night. Let's play it by ear.

But everybody has to REALLY TRY to finish this book. Not put it off.

It's not really THAT long.

I TRIED to get everybody to agree if we should delay the start of reading this, until after the holidays or whatever, but nobody rang any alarms until we had already STARTED reading (per agreement from everyone). I should have known better.
Well i will be done with it in the next 3 or 4 hours. @Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775) is done i think, and @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) can finish it.
It would be awesome to have all five of us.

I can ALWAYS read a book. I don't work or go to school.
allegro , i want for everyone to finish, and for us to have a stimulating discussion and then have the same group do it again with another book.
It would really make me happy.

allegro
12-31-2016, 01:18 PM
You could go read those other (really short) pieces of slave narrative that I linked in this thread while we are waiting for the others to catch up, if you get ahead.

They really DO lend a lot to the discussion.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 07:24 AM
idk @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) . I have had almost all the "chattel" and "nigger" i can handle right now. Yay america! :P
So the next book, we should pick one that doesn't make you hate the human race?

Honestly though, i will probably read them. It's just i read most of that book at once, and godDAMN it was rough.

allegro
01-01-2017, 11:54 AM
It was even rougher FOR THEM. But, that literature (referenced) is true American literature.

You have to read a lot of those slave narratives to apply African-American Literary Criticism (https://brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/afro_am.php) if you get an English Lit degree. It was some of my fave lit. It's brutal but what they went through just to TELL IT is incredible.

My main thought about THIS book is that I REALLY liked the protagonist, Cora. Every time something happened to her, I found I was REALLY rooting for her and my blood pressure would go up when she was in danger.

Louie_Cypher
01-01-2017, 12:12 PM
what happened to her mother?
-louie

allegro
01-01-2017, 01:28 PM
what happened to her mother?
-louie

Did you get to the chapter entitled "Mabel," yet? (Page 291)

allegro
01-01-2017, 01:30 PM
Note the Acknowledgements from the Author:


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Nicole Aragi, Bill Thomas, Rose Courteau, Michael Goldsmith, Duvall Osteen, and Alison Rich (still) for getting this book into your hands. At Hanser over the years: Anna Leube, Christina Knecht, and Piero Salabe. Also: Franklin D. Roosevelt for funding the Federal Writers’ Project, which collected the life stories of former slaves in the 1930s. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, obviously. The work of Nathan Huggins, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward E. Baptist, Eric Foner, Fergus Bordewich, and James H. Jones was very helpful. Josiah Nott’s theories of “amalgamation.” The Diary of a Resurrectionist. Runaway slave advertisements come from the digital collections of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits (“Where Eagles Dare [fast version],” “Horror Business,” “Hybrid Moments”) and Blanck Mass (“Dead Format”). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth. And finally, Julie, Maddie, and Beckett for all the love and support.

allegro
01-01-2017, 01:35 PM
iSo the next book, we should pick one that doesn't make you hate the human race?
The next book I really want to read is THIS ONE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802124941/ref=s9_acsd_al_bw_c_x_1_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-5&pf_rd_r=R7XFFVJKVDJ7CFMREVP5&pf_rd_r=R7XFFVJKVDJ7CFMREVP5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=88d70c0b-3e99-4f74-a1e2-9fe8ad6a2211&pf_rd_p=88d70c0b-3e99-4f74-a1e2-9fe8ad6a2211&pf_rd_i=6960520011), it won the Fiction Pulitzer in 2016. But, that can be discussed in another thread.

Louie_Cypher
01-01-2017, 01:41 PM
shoul
Did you get to the chapter entitled "Mabel," yet? (Page 291) should be there in a little bit binge watching firefly on crackle
-louie

allegro
01-01-2017, 01:43 PM
shoul should be there in a little bit binge watching firefly on crackle
-louie

That chapter will answer your question. It's the creates irony for the ENTIRE BOOK.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 02:17 PM
allegro it is just SO fucking intense.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the talk of the cotton machine running on blood, and how this country was created by stealing land and then stealing people to work it. I'd never thought about it that way, and it's true, and it's fucking AWFUL.

This book made me REALLY think about slavery for the first time, more so than roots or 12 years a slave or anything else.
It was so insanely terrible and so fucking RECENT.

I loved Cora too, and the Underground Railroad was INSIDE her. She was the train, with the secret strength in dark tunnels of her heart.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 02:17 PM
allegro also i love your new avatar pic :)

allegro
01-01-2017, 02:41 PM
One thing that really stuck out to me was the talk of the cotton machine running on blood, and how this country was created by stealing land and then stealing people to work it.
I have that highlighted:


Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

Also, I love it when Cora starts reading slave narratives, herself, in the library at Valentine's farm:


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. People had put all that down on paper in tiny rooms. Some of them even had dark skin like her. It put her head in a fog each time she opened the door.

I think THIS quote kinda sums up the whole book, pointing to the future:

“Talk is good,” Valentine said. “Talk clears the air and makes it so you can see what’s what. We’ll see what the mood of the farm is. It’s mine, but it’s everybody’s, too. Yours. I’ll abide by the decision of the people.” Cora saw the discussion had depleted him. “Why do all this,” she asked. “For all of us?”

“I thought you were one of the smart ones,” Valentine said. “Don’t you know? White man ain’t going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.”

elevenism
01-01-2017, 02:52 PM
allegro i have a LOT highlighted. I REALLY look forward to discussing this with intelligent people!
Just these few posts here have gotten me quite excited for it!

allegro
01-01-2017, 02:53 PM
By the way ... you can download the "Kindle" app to your PC HERE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc/download) and for your MAC HERE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/mac/download?forced=1). Install it, log into Amazon, pull up this book, and you can search the book and copy-and-paste text from the book into this forum (besides the text you highlighted). It also pulls up the items you highlighted in the book (under the "search" spyglass).

elevenism
01-01-2017, 02:54 PM
By the way ... you can download the "Kindle" app to your PC HERE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc/download) and for your MAC HERE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/mac/download?forced=1). Install it, log into Amazon, pull up this book, and you can search the book and copy-and-paste text from the book into this forum.
Ok i will do so now. :)

allegro
01-01-2017, 02:57 PM
Ridgeway's words on Page 80 need to be discussed, too:


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.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:02 PM
I can't get my kindle books to show up in my pc library, and no, don't waste your time trying to figure it out. I think i know why.

When we discuss, i will search through the book using caliber or just have the kindle here in front of me.

I agree about the words on page 80.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:02 PM
Also this, on Pages 266-267:


“We’re not supposed to talk about what we do down here,” Royal said. “And our passengers aren’t supposed to talk about how the railroad operates— it’d put a lot of good people in danger. They could talk if they wanted to, but they don’t.” It was true. When she told of her escape, she omitted the tunnels and kept to the main contours. It was private, a secret about yourself it never occurred to you to share. Not a bad secret, but an intimacy so much a part of who you were that it could not be made separate. It would die in the sharing. “I showed you because you’ve seen more of the railroad than most,” Royal continued. “I wanted you to see this— how it fits together. Or doesn’t.”

“That’s why,” he said. He rubbed his spectacles with his shirttail. “The underground railroad is bigger than its operators— it’s all of you, too. The small spurs, the big trunk lines. We have the newest locomotives and the obsolete engines, and we have handcars like that one. It goes everywhere, to places we know and those we don’t. We got this tunnel right here, running beneath us, and no one knows where it leads. If we keep the railroad running, and none of us can figure it out, maybe you can.” She told him she didn’t know why it was there, or what it meant. All she knew is that she didn’t want to run anymore.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:03 PM
I can't get my kindle books to show up in my pc library, and no, don't waste your time trying to figure it out. I think i know why.
Make sure you log in with the same account as where you library lives, and then click on "ALL ITEMS" (in the library), then you have to "download" this book to the Kindle program on the computer to use it.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:03 PM
Hell yes. I have some of that highlighted. I have SO much highlighted for discussion.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:11 PM
Make sure you log in with the same account as where you library lives, and then click on "ALL ITEMS"
it still isn't working and i am fairly certain that i used the same library.

I will have to discuss from the Kindle himself.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:14 PM
The first question, too, is: Why was the slave ship called "The Nanny?"

Any particular message in that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_of_the_Maroons)?

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:16 PM
Okay, the Nanny. Of course there is a message in it, but i shall have to look at the text ;)

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:17 PM
elevenism, Ohhhhh, so you didn't buy this book, your friend did. Look at "Library" -- "Collections" -- "Import Collections"

Just trying to make things easier for you. Did the highlights show up in that link I gave you the other day?

I gave you a link up there about the Nanny. :p Possible?

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:18 PM
The first question, too, is: Why was the slave ship called "The Nanny?"

Any particular message in that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_of_the_Maroons)?
There are, if i remember correctly, more than one messages involved in the ship's name.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:22 PM
There are, if i remember correctly, more than one messages involved in the ship's name.
I would imagine so. I don't think this author does anything for nothing.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:22 PM
@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475), Ohhhhh, so you didn't buy this book, your friend did.

THAT is definitely why it doesn't show up. I think.

Dude, let's not digress about stuff like that, okay? no me me me stuff :)

Duly noted.
:)
Again, i am hell bent on doing this right.
I shan't digress in such fashion once we actually begin discussing the book (which i suppose we are technically starting to do now.)

In fact, i will remove said digressions.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:24 PM
Sounds like we are in fact discussing it.

Did you finish the book?

I have to go check my Crockpot.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:27 PM
Sounds like we are in fact discussing it.

Did you finish the book?

I have to go check my Crockpot.
Quite naturally.

allegro
01-01-2017, 03:29 PM
Quite naturally.

I was thinking that I was gonna hate the ending because it was headed that way, but then it suddenly shifted and then I didn't hate it. Everything wrapped up nicely, for me anyway.

Did you LIKE the book, overall?

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:37 PM
I was thinking that I was gonna hate the ending because it was headed that way, but then it suddenly shifted and then I didn't hate it. Everything wrapped up nicely, for me anyway.

Did you LIKE the book, overall?
Oh hell yes.
I liked it a LOT, although it was pretty fucking jarring.
(i am searching for this Mio drink enhancer, sorry for late response.)

So you liked it too?

I can go in my room where the laptop and kindle are if you would like to commence with a bit of preliminary discussion.

elevenism
01-01-2017, 03:40 PM
allegro , i too feel that everything in this book was VERY deliberate.
All killer, no filler.

allegro
01-01-2017, 04:47 PM
Now THIS PART OF THE BOOK keeps coming out over and over again: Children of slaves, marriage between slaves, sexual relations (rape or with consent) between the slaves, sex between master and slave, etc. AND the link between the "original purchase" and the "property" or "ownership" aspects of any offsprings from the slaves.

From the first chapter, Ajarry:


Cora’s grandmother took a husband three times. She had a predilection for broad shoulders and big hands, as did Old Randall, although the master and his slave had different sorts of labor in mind. The two plantations were well-stocked, ninety head of nigger on the northern half and eighty-five head on the southern half. Ajarry generally had her pick. When she didn’t, she was patient.

See THIS LINK (http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2910) which I think is REQUIRED READING for this book.

NOW: Big spoiler here if you haven't finished yet so STOP HERE if you haven't finished:

The author, near the VERY END, FINALLY post Cora's Reward poster, and it says:


RAN AWAY from her legal but not rightful master fifteen months past, a slave girl called CORA;

of ordinary height and dark brown complexion; has a star-shape mark on her temple from an injury;

possessed of a spirited nature and devious method. Possibly answering to the name BESSIE.

Last seen in Indiana among the outlaws of John Valentine Farm. She has stopped running. Reward remains unclaimed.

SHE WAS NEVER PROPERTY.

DECEMBER 23


She was never property.

Ajarry was purchased.

Mabel was born of Ajarry.

Cora was born of Mabel.

(At this point, my head exploded because I hadn't figured it out until that point)

elevenism
01-01-2017, 05:29 PM
allegro i cannot keep my damned eyes open. i did not sleep last night, hence my lack of contributions.
i just realized that i have been dozing off.
I will read the links and listen to the lecture ASAP, but i fear i am going to need at least a nap before i am able to get rolling on this in earnest.

When it comes to african american literature, all i can really remember is Ellison's The Invisible Man. I've read more AFRICAN literature like Things Fall Apart and Cry the Beloved Country.
Re feminist work, i've read a bit of contemporary stuff like Eve Ensler as well as older proto feminist work like Kate Chopin's short stories and her novel The Awakening, and Du Maurier's Rebecca and The Scarlet Letter of course.

I guess i'm pretty under-read on both fronts, but perhaps the links will do me some good.

Oh, there is a great anne rice book that gets pretty deep into octaroons and quadroons and has nothing supernatural about it called The Feast of all Saints. It is a rich historical novel.

How long is the Frederick Douglas book? Should i read it when i wake up?
What would you have me read to prepare for this discussion?

elevenism
01-02-2017, 05:34 PM
okay everbody, what time are we doing this? allegro allegate Louie_Cypher Sarah K

Louie_Cypher
01-02-2017, 05:55 PM
i thought some parts were a little hanfistted, parts i could here his editor, oOhprah bookclub, socail sceinces, i did like it enough to give to my nephew's all n all enjoyable. also firefly was awesome b.t.w.
-louie

elevenism
01-02-2017, 05:59 PM
One implication of the slave ship being called the Nanny is the two wildly different versions of the life of Nanny of the Maroons (says the wikipedia article.)
One version says she was a slave who toiled in harsh conditions, while another says she came to Jamaica a free woman, descended from African royalty.
This mirrors Cora's status. It also ties into one of the repeated messages of the book, the pervasiveness of a like "slave mentality," which is illustrated, for instance, by homer not being able to sleep without shackling himself to the wagon.

I think that the author is also saying that a version of this mentality continues to this day.

elevenism
01-02-2017, 06:01 PM
i thought some parts were a little hanfistted, parts i could here his editor, oOhprah bookclub, socail sceinces, i did like it enough to give to my nephew's all n all enjoyable. also firefly was awesome b.t.w.
-louie
ooooh...kay, yes, firefly is awesome. Does this mean you are out of the discussion?

elevenism
01-02-2017, 06:09 PM
allegro i am surprised you aren't here and hope everything is okay.
I will check back in a bit.

Louie_Cypher
01-02-2017, 07:11 PM
ooooh...kay, yes, firefly is awesome. Does this mean you are out of the discussion?
noI hopeto still be involved
-louie

elevenism
01-03-2017, 09:08 AM
allegro where you at?

allegro
01-03-2017, 11:52 AM
Sorry been really busy with family. You guys go ahead and discuss, though. I'm not going to be the only primary talking in here, I just said I would "guide" it and I already did that by starting the thread and providing a shit ton of questions on the first page (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/threads/4294-ETS-Book-Club-Book-Colson-Whitehead-s-quot-The-Underground-Railroad-quot?p=328453#post328453), plus a bunch of quotes. But I am swamped at work plus stuff at home so I'll jump in here when I can. My New Year's Resolution is to stay offline as much as possible and to live in my Real Life. I have confidence that you guys can discuss this just fine, though.

allegate
01-03-2017, 12:32 PM
Do you think there was anywhere truly safe to escape to in these times?I don't think there was anywhere safe, and I think it holds to this day: There's nowhere safe for slaves. I think that it endured way too long in these United States and that a poisoning of the well took place. It's hinted at when they mention how hard it would be to free the slaves, "what would we do with that many uneducated people at one time?" Instead of helping with the transition, I think the ball - as it were - was dropped and no one's come back to pick it up. Maybe someday we'll be OK with all men (and women) being created equal. Even the blacks who have "made it" are the first against the wall when it comes time. e.g. Wesley Snipes, Lauryn Hill, Chuck Berry, Darryl Strawberry, Richard Pryor...hmm.

Also was listening to Kanye West while out jogging and New Slaves came on.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOL-f_UO5k


My momma was raised in the era when
Clean water was only served to the fairer skin
Doing clothes you would have thought I had help
But they wasn't satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself
You see it's broke nigga racism
That's that "Don't touch anything in the store"
And this rich nigga racism
That's that "Come in, please buy more
What you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond chain?
All you blacks want all the same things"
Used to only be niggas now everybody playing
Spending everything on Alexander Wang
New Slaves



Granted I'm wildly speculating and talking out my ass but hey, that's what I do.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 03:08 PM
Sorry been really busy with family. You guys go ahead and discuss, though. I'm not going to be the only primary talking in here, I just said I would "guide" it and I already did that by starting the thread and providing a shit ton of questions on the first page (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/threads/4294-ETS-Book-Club-Book-Colson-Whitehead-s-quot-The-Underground-Railroad-quot?p=328453#post328453), plus a bunch of quotes. But I am swamped at work plus stuff at home so I'll jump in here when I can. My New Year's Resolution is to stay offline as much as possible and to live in my Real Life. I have confidence that you guys can discuss this just fine, though.
no need to apologize and i commend you on your resolution.
But i was kind of hoping you would lead the discussion!
Happy new year.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 03:13 PM
Okay. What do you guys think about this?

What if we answer one or two of these questions at a time? Once everyone contributes on each one, then we move on to the next.

BOOK CLUB GUIDE

1. How does the depiction of slavery in The Underground Railroad compare to other depictions in literature and film?
2. The scenes on Randall’s plantation are horrific—how did the writing affect you as a reader?
3. In North Carolina, institutions like doctor’s offices and museums that were supposed to help ‘black uplift’ were corrupt and unethical. How do Cora’s challenges in North Carolina mirror what America is still struggling with today?
4. Cora constructs elaborate daydreams about her life as a free woman and dedicates herself to reading and expanding her education. What role do you think stories play for Cora and other travelers using the underground railroad?
5. “The treasure, of course, was the underground railroad... Some might call freedom the dearest currency of all.” How does this quote shape the story for you?
6. How does Ethel’s backstory, her relationship with slavery and Cora’s use of her home affect you?
7. What are your impressions of John Valentine’s vision for the farm?
8. When speaking of Valentine’s Farm, Cora explains “Even if the adults were free of the shackles that held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. If the white men let them.” What makes this so impactful both in the novel and today?
9. What do you think about Terrance Randall’s fate?
10. How do you feel about Cora’s mother’s decision to run away? How does your opinion of Cora’s mother change once you’ve learned about her fate?
11. Whitehead creates emotional instability for the reader: if things are going well, you get comfortable before a sudden tragedy. What does this sense of fear do to you as you’re reading?
12. Who do you connect with most in the novel and why?
13. How does the state-by-state structure impact your reading process? Does it remind you of any other works of literature?
14. The book emphasizes how slaves were treated as property and reduced to objects. Do you feel that you now have a better understanding of what slavery was like?
15. Why do you think the author chose to portray a literal railroad? How did this aspect of magical realism impact your concept of how the real underground railroad worked?
16. Does The Underground Railroad change the way you look at the history of America, especially in the time of slavery and abolitionism?
allegate ? Louie_Cypher ?

allegro
01-03-2017, 03:25 PM
no need to apologize and i commend you on your resolution.
But i was kind of hoping you would lead the discussion!

I can't really "lead" an online discussion, that's what the questions were for.

Think of this like an interpretation of NIN lyrics.

In NIN lyrics discussions, nobody necessarily "leads" that discussion; people just throw a few ideas out there and others either agree and elaborate or they refute it and present their own ideas, etc.


At a book club, they talk about their feelings about the book and their interpretations of the book's message (beyond "I hate Oprah's Book Club" which, really, I think is a really stupid point to bring up since the author didn't write this book for Oprah's Book Club and I have actually read some really good books in Oprah's Book Club, including Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" and Franzen's "The Corrections" etc., and that comment isn't a criticism of the contents of the book nor is it a real contribution to the conversation).

See what I mean?

I mean, I'm not teaching a class and you are a bunch of students, that's not how a real-life book club works. In a real-life book club, everybody meets in person with drinks and snacks and they say "okay, wow, okay, what did we think about this book? Let's discuss" and there isn't a lecturer standing in front of the room and people taking notes. The person HOSTING the book club meeting at his/her house is maybe handing out snacks and scheduled the meeting, but I already did that by creating this thread, doing research as to the questions and then posting them, etc.

But I really don't have the time or energy or even the knowledge or inclination to do a "lecture" here about interpretations of this book, I was hoping to have an actual discussion among a group of people, not me typing or copy-and-pasting a whole bunch of shit and others going "oh, yeah, that too." And when it started looking like that was the hat people expected me to wear, my heart sunk and I lost all interest in this thing.

Look, LISTING THE QUESTIONS isn't going to help, either. allegate has already opened the door to the start of a conversation and it sat there like a big wet turd.

allegro
01-03-2017, 03:32 PM
I don't think there was anywhere safe, and I think it holds to this day: There's nowhere safe for slaves. I think that it endured way too long in these United States and that a poisoning of the well took place. It's hinted at when they mention how hard it would be to free the slaves, "what would we do with that many uneducated people at one time?" Instead of helping with the transition, I think the ball - as it were - was dropped and no one's come back to pick it up. Maybe someday we'll be OK with all men (and women) being created equal. Even the blacks who have "made it" are the first against the wall when it comes time. e.g. Wesley Snipes, Lauryn Hill, Chuck Berry, Darryl Strawberry, Richard Pryor...hmm.

Also was listening to Kanye West while out jogging and New Slaves came on.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOL-f_UO5k



Granted I'm wildly speculating and talking out my ass but hey, that's what I do.

I think this is brilliant, thank you, this is a good start to a conversation. Brilliant, and a great tie-in to Kanye West, awesome.

It's like when elevenism mentioned that Homer would sleep with his shackled on because he couldn't sleep without them.

It's the quote I posted above from Valentine the I posted on the prior page:


“Talk is good,” Valentine said. “Talk clears the air and makes it so you can see what’s what. We’ll see what the mood of the farm is. It’s mine, but it’s everybody’s, too. Yours. I’ll abide by the decision of the people.” Cora saw the discussion had depleted him. “Why do all this,” she asked. “For all of us?”

“I thought you were one of the smart ones,” Valentine said. “Don’t you know? White man ain’t going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.”

Or this quote from Cora (page 179):


Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was— a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn’t sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.

Or this one:


Lander’s talk verged on a sermon, concerning the dilemma of finding your purpose once you’ve slipped the yoke of slavery. The manifold frustrations of liberty.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 03:39 PM
So i will start with the first one.
How does the depiction of slavery compare to other depictions?

Well, right from the beginning, it shocked the shit out of me. We start with Ajarry. She had "never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon..." sounded nice. But then the sentence continued "the water dazzled after her time in the dungeon."
Ajarry thought she was about to see her father soon, but finds out that he was killed, violently. The rest of the family burned when the infected ship was set on fire. She is raped multiple times and tries to kill herself twice. All of this happens in the first couple of pages, ffs!
Then it casually talks about how she was traded for beads, and then part of a "bulk purchase."
It talks about the difficulty in accounting. It refers to the slaves as merchandise. Ajarry comes to think of herself as a "thing."
They talk about bucks and speak of "head" of nigger just like head of cattle.

This is all in the first chapter, and it really surprised me. All of this was presented matter-of-fact. I guess it never really occured to me that THAT IS HOW IT REALLY WAS. I've never thought of slavery in these terrible terms and i don't know why.
I think this was the goal of the first chapter.
It didn't pull any punches, and was thr roughest, probably most realistic depiction i've ever read.

The man with the rings pinching Ajarry's nipple stands out.
@allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) ?

allegro
01-03-2017, 03:41 PM
Ridgeway refers to every slave except Cora as "it" when he is talking to her.

This text is from "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs (which the author credits as an influence):


Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2d, the
slaves are expected to go to their new masters. On a farm, they work until
the corn and cotton are laid. They then have two holidays. Some masters
give them a good dinner under the trees. This over, they work until
Christmas eve. If no heavy charges are meantime brought against them, they
are given four or five holidays, whichever the master or overseer may think
proper. Then comes New Year's eve; and they gather together their little
alls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings, and wait anxiously
for the dawning of day. At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with
men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom
pronounced. The slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel
master, within forty miles of him.

It is easy to find out, on that day, who clothes and feeds his slaves well;
for he is surrounded by a crowd, begging, "Please, massa, hire me this
year. I will work _very_ hard, massa."

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked
up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during
the year. Should he chance to change his mind, thinking it justifiable to
violate an extorted promise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used
till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in
chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days!

If he lives until the next year, perhaps the same man will hire him again,
without even giving him an opportunity of going to the hiring-ground. After
those for hire are disposed of, those for sale are called up.

O, you happy free women, contrast _your_ New Year's day with that of the
poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day
is blessed. Friendly wishes meet you every where, and gifts are showered
upon you. Even hearts that have been estranged from you soften at this
season, and lips that have been silent echo back, "I wish you a happy New
Year." Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for
a caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them
from you.

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows.
She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn
from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might
die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the
system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's
instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.

On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the
auction-block. She knew that _some_ of them would be taken from her; but
they took _all_. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother
was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all
far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them;
this he refused to do. How _could_ he, when he knew he would sell them, one
by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in
the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung
her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why _don't_ God kill
me?" I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of
daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.

Slaveholders have a method, peculiar to their institution, of getting rid
of _old_ slaves, whose lives have been worn out in their service. I knew an
old woman, who for seventy years faithfully served her master. She had
become almost helpless, from hard labor and disease. Her owners moved to
Alabama, and the old black woman was left to be sold to any body who would
give twenty dollars for her.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 03:44 PM
Look, LISTING THE QUESTIONS isn't going to help, either. @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) has already opened the door to the start of a conversation and it sat there like a big wet turd.

i just opened the computer @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , and am also trying to watch tv with the wife.
i think what allegate wrote is thought provoking as well, i just thought that going through those questions would be a good idea too.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 03:53 PM
w/r/t what you said @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) , i totally agree.
The prison system is also new slavery.
And this book has destroyed my hope that things will EVER be okay, racially, in this country. Like allegate said, the well was poisoned.

So do you guys think this thing is ultimately hopeful or fatalistic?

allegro
01-03-2017, 03:54 PM
i just opened the computer allegro , and am also trying to watch tv with the wife.
And I am taking a short break from my job, while I'm eating something for a late lunch. Then i have to go back to work.

Anyway, pinching Ajarry's nipples comes back down to female slaves as being the true protagonists in the book: Ajarry, Mabel, and Cora. They give birth to MORE WORKERS. and those children do not belong to them; the children belong to their masters.

The freakiest thing, to me, is the irony in that whole search for Mabel. Cora's anger at Mabel for abandoning her, being sad that Mabel could leave her so easily; Randall being pissed and humiliated that Mabel had not been found; Ridgeway being pissed that he hadn't found Mabel and his career was affected.

And, here, SHE DROWNED IN THE FUCKING SWAMP after being bit by a poisonous cottonmouth snake UPON TRYING TO RETURN TO RANDALL'S FARM TO GO BACK TO HER BABY, CORA.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:03 PM
And I am taking a short break from my job, while I'm eating something for a late lunch. Then i have to go back to work.
and i have to get in the shower and go to the pharmacy. my point was that i hadn't just left allegate's post there for long. i just saw it.

i wasn't hoping for you to give a lecture. it's just that you planned to guide the discussion and i've never done this before.
also i think that you are 1/3 of the people who actually finished the book ;P

So that was my idea, to go through the questions. I took a fuckload of notes on this thing and wanted to discuss them, hence my plan.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:06 PM
The prison system is also new slavery.
Certainly, the "bad blood" experiments performed in South Carolina is a reference to THE TUSKEGEE STUDY (https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm) and the enforced birth control is a reference to what many people (especially black people) believe were the origins of PLANNED PARENTHOOD (http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population).

And that whole "Plan" in South Carolina was to eliminate negroes via disease and birth control, while North Carolina's plan was to just kill them all in a Hitler-esque Final Solution.

You can't have Capitalism without Racism (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-west-savali/you-cant-have-capitalism-_b_5809628.html). (Malcolm X)

The cotton used in the North and the South was produced by free labor (slaves). Now, Capitalism still relies on a top-down system wherein the people at the very bottom are still, to this day, most often minorities.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:07 PM
i've never done this before
Online, me neither. So none of us are experts. We are all winging it. Online communication is a bitch, already, so 3 - 4 people should make it easier.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:08 PM
hells bells, i will do 90 percent of the talking as long as someone talks back a little bit :P

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:11 PM
If you drift any more, nothing will ever get done. Just saying, Drift Master. :p

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:12 PM
Certainly, the "bad blood" experiments performed in South Carolina is a reference to THE TUSKEGEE STUDY (https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm) and the enforced birth control is a reference to what many people (especially black people) believe were the origins of PLANNED PARENTHOOD (http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population).

And that whole "Plan" in South Carolina was to eliminate negroes via disease and birth control, while North Carolina's plan was to just kill them all in a Hitleresque Final Solution.

And the ending is bittersweet, because, like allegate said, there is NOWHERE safe to go, not even into the future.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:17 PM
The freakiest thing, to me, is the irony in that whole search for Mabel. Cora's anger at Mabel for abandoning her, being sad that Mabel could leave her so easily; Randall being pissed and humiliated that Mabel had not been found; Ridgeway being pissed that he hadn't found Mabel and his career was affected.

And, here, SHE DROWNED IN THE FUCKING SWAMP after being bit by a poisonous cottonmouth snake UPON TRYING TO RETURN TO RANDALL'S FARM TO GO BACK TO HER BABY, CORA.
i think this speaks to a sort of misplaced anger and cycle of violence that is touched on, and the "slave mentality."

Ajarry threatens her children to get them to obey the masters for instance.
And there is a fuckload more on this-i will be back soon.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:28 PM
True, but isn't it possible that Cora never considered this because all she knows is misery upon misery?
Not being cared for and such?
I think it might be hinting that this sort of thing works its way down through the generations, this feeling of being mistreated that was started by slavery.

Those who are mistreated mistreat others, and this creates like a mental slavery. The chains may be gone, but the psychological scars go on and on, even NOW.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:31 PM
No, I don't think it occurred to Cora because Cora was still a hurt child abandoned by her mother. She ached for her mother, her mother didn't say goodbye.

Cora SEARCHED FOR her mother on NUMEROUS occasions after she escaped, asking around for Mabel and risking outing herself as the escaped Cora from Randall's farm.

She missed her mother, she wanted to find her.

This is the mother-daughter connection. The same mother-daughter connection that got Mabel to turn around to return to her daughter, Cora. Had Mabel continued through that black water, she wouldn't have been bitten by that snake and died. She died trying to return to her daughter, Cora.

Think of this as like O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" irony.

allegate
01-03-2017, 04:32 PM
Certainly, the "bad blood" experiments performed in South Carolina is a reference to THE TUSKEGEE STUDY (https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm) and the enforced birth control is a reference to what many people (especially black people) believe were the origins of PLANNED PARENTHOOD (http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population).

And that whole "Plan" in South Carolina was to eliminate negroes via disease and birth control, while North Carolina's plan was to just kill them all in a Hitler-esque Final Solution.

You can't have Capitalism without Racism (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kirsten-west-savali/you-cant-have-capitalism-_b_5809628.html). (Malcolm X)

The cotton used in the North and the South was produced by free labor (slaves). Now, Capitalism still relies on a top-down system wherein the people at the very bottom are still, to this day, most often minorities.
I felt like the bad blood experiments were talking about sickle cell disease. pg 82:
A group of men, some of whom she recognized from socials and afternoons on the green, filled the adjacent room while they waited for their blood treatments. She hadn’t heard of blood trouble before arriving in South Carolina, but it afflicted a great number of the men in the dormitories and was the source of tremendous effort on the part of the town doctors. The specialists had their own section it seemed, the patients disappearing down a long hall when their name was called.Granted it could go either way. But what little I know about SCD is that it affects blacks (Google says African descent, so not just blacks?), especially black males. So I went with a slightly more altruistic reason for the blood tests. :)

And I didn't feel the birth control was altogether coming from a bad place, just that a lot of the "medicine" all boils down to "We know what's good for you" and this is no better than on a plantation where you don't have a say in your well-being, the others do. The doctors were trying to help, in a backwards 1800 kind of way. Again, maybe a little too altruistic but I was looking for the good in the people in South Carolina.

Especially compared to North Carolina, holy cow.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:36 PM
I felt like the bad blood experiments were talking about sickle cell disease. pg 82:Granted it could go either way. But what little I know about SCD is that it affects blacks (Google says African descent, so not just blacks?), especially black males. So I went with a slightly more altruistic reason for the blood tests.
This is from Page 121:


“Whatever you do, man, keep out of Red’s Café, if you have a taste for nigger gals.” Several of his male patients frequented the saloon, carrying on with the female patrons. His patients believed they were being treated for blood ailments. The tonics the hospital administered, however, were merely sugar water. In fact, the niggers were participants in a study of the latent and tertiary stages of syphilis.

“They think you’re helping them?” Sam asked the doctor. He kept his voice neutral, even as his face got hot. “It’s important research,” Bertram informed him. “Discover how a disease spreads, the trajectory of infection, and we approach a cure.” Red’s was the only colored saloon in the town proper; the proprietor got a break on the rent for a watchful eye. The syphilis program was one of many studies and experiments under way at the colored wing of the hospital.

Also, from Pages 116-117:


Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies— steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better.

Page 123:


Cora thought back to the night she and Caesar decided to stay, the screaming woman who wandered into the green when the social came to an end. “They’re taking away my babies.” The woman wasn’t lamenting an old plantation injustice but a crime perpetrated here in South Carolina. The doctors were stealing her babies from her, not her former masters.

allegate
01-03-2017, 04:40 PM
True, but isn't it possible that Cora never considered this because all she knows is misery upon misery?
Not being cared for and such?
I think it might be hinting that this sort of thing works its way down through the generations, this feeling of being mistreated that was started by slavery.

Those who are mistreated mistreat others, and this creates like a mental slavery. The chains may be gone, but the psychological scars go on and on, even NOW.

I mean, we're kind of getting into the weeds (no pun intended) here but maybe the reason she never thought about her mom being dead is twofold:

A) She managed to escape when everyone says it can't be done. Isn't it easier to say she escaped to hold out hope for your own attempt? Better that than ->
B) She didn't escape, she's dead, and the crushing despair that brings to a slave. You're either going to die as an old slave or be tortured to death as a young slave. That said, either of these are better than ->
C) She wanted freedom more than she wanted her daughter. That would also be pretty crushing, to not be wanted. This is touched specifically in the book and she's pretty angry about it.

And I agree with the generations of mistreatment - That's probably where you get the idea of reparations from.

allegate
01-03-2017, 04:42 PM
This is from Page 121:



Also, from Pages 116-117:

Totally forgot about that saloon! It's been a week since I read that part and the holidays were a blur so all I remembered was my initial reading of the situations. I need to go through SC again, I guess.

from pg 89, re the forced birth control:
Cora thought back to the night she and Caesar decided to stay, the screaming woman who wandered into the green when the social came to an end. “They’re taking away my babies.” The woman wasn’t lamenting an old plantation injustice but a crime perpetrated here in South Carolina. The doctors were stealing her babies from her, not her former masters.Should have skimmed it again.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:46 PM
Totally forgot about that saloon! It's been a week since I read that part and the holidays were a blur so all I remembered was my initial reading of the situations. I need to go through SC again, I guess.

from pg 89, re the forced birth control:Should have skimmed it again.

I quoted that above, it's on MY page 123, I guess we all have different pages, ugh.

Another quote:


After she dressed, Dr. Stevens pulled over a wooden stool. His manner remained light as he said, “You’ve had intimate relations. Have you considered birth control?” He smiled. South Carolina was in the midst of a large public health program, Dr. Stevens explained, to educate folks about a new surgical technique wherein the tubes inside a woman were severed to prevent the growth of a baby. The procedure was simple, permanent, and without risk. The new hospital was specially equipped, and Dr. Stevens himself had studied under the man who pioneered the technique, which had been perfected on the colored inmates of a Boston asylum. Teaching the surgery to local doctors and offering its gift to the colored population was part of the reason he was hired. “What if I don’t want to?” “The choice is yours, of course,” the doctor said. “As of this week, it is mandatory for some in the state. Colored women who have already birthed more than two children, in the name of population control. Imbeciles and the otherwise mentally unfit, for obvious reasons. Habitual criminals. But that doesn’t apply to you, Bessie. Those are women who already have enough burdens. This is just a chance for you to take control over your own destiny.”

That MUSEUM in South Carolina ugh WHAT THE FUCK.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 04:50 PM
okay hot damn, this shit is heating up now.
but i have to run to the pharmacy.
perhaps i am connecting a dot that shouldn't be connected regarding the irony of Mabel/Cora because my idea of its meaning goes along with what i feel is the main, fatalistic theme of the book.
But do remember, while Cora longed for her mother, she also hated her.

i am going to try to do this really fast. hopefully you two are still here when i get back.

allegro
01-03-2017, 04:54 PM
C) She wanted freedom more than she wanted her daughter. That would also be pretty crushing, to not be wanted.
That was Cora's perception. But see my above post (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/threads/4294-ETS-Book-Club-Book-Colson-Whitehead-s-quot-The-Underground-Railroad-quot?p=333996#post333996).

This section, from Mabel:


She lay on her back and ate another turnip. Without the sound of her splashing and huffing, the noises of the swamp resumed. The spadefoot toads and turtles and slithering creatures, the chattering of black insects. Above— through the leaves and branches of the black-water trees— the sky scrolled before her, new constellations wheeling in the darkness as she relaxed. No patrollers, no bosses, no cries of anguish to induct her into another’s despair. No cabin walls shuttling her through the night seas like the hold of a slave ship. Sandhill cranes and warblers, otters splashing. On the bed of damp earth, her breathing slowed and that which separated herself from the swamp disappeared. She was free. This moment. She had to go back. The girl was waiting on her. This would have to do for now. Her hopelessness had gotten the best of her, speaking under her thoughts like a demon. She would keep this moment close, her own treasure. When she found the words to share it with Cora, the girl would understand there was something beyond the plantation, past all that she knew. That one day if she stayed strong, the girl could have it for herself. The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse.

Also, from my Page 53 (from "Georgia")

The other Hob women dozed beside her in the loft. She listened to their breathing: That is Nag; that is Rida with her one ragged exhalation every other minute. This time tomorrow she would be loose in the night. Is this what her mother felt when she decided? Cora’s image of her was remote. What she remembered most was her sadness. Her mother was a Hob woman before there was a Hob. With the same reluctance to mix, the burden that bent her at all times and set her apart. Cora couldn’t put her together in her mind. Who was she? Where was she now? Why had she left her? Without a special kiss to say, When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it.

later:

It had been a whim. Once Mabel ran, Cora thought of her as little as possible. After landing in South Carolina, she realized that she had banished her mother not from sadness but from rage. She hated her. Having tasted freedom’s bounty, it was incomprehensible to Cora that Mabel had abandoned her to that hell. A child. Her company would have made the escape more difficult, but Cora hadn’t been a baby. If she could pick cotton, she could run. She would have died in that place, after untold brutalities, if Caesar had not come along. In the train, in the deathless tunnel, she had finally asked him why he brought her with him. Caesar said, “Because I knew you could do it.” How she hated her. The nights without number she spent up in the miserable loft, tossing about, kicking the woman next to her, devising ways off the plantation. Sneaking into a cartload of cotton and leaping to the road outside New Orleans. Bribing an overseer with her favors. Taking her hatchet and running through the swamp as her wretched mother had done. All the sleepless nights. In the light of morning she convinced herself that her scheming had been a dream. Those were not her thoughts, not at all. Because to walk around with that in your mind and do nothing was to die. She didn’t know where her mother had fled. Mabel hadn’t spent her freedom saving money to buy her daughter out of bondage, that was certain. Randall would not have allowed it, but nonetheless. Miss Lucy never did find her mother’s name in her files. If she had, Cora would have walked up to Mabel and knocked her flat.

And the VERY FIRST WORDS of the book:


THE first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no. This was her grandmother talking.

Ajarry was afraid to run, she accepted her fate. But Mabel wasn't afraid. (But then Mabel was afraid but we didn't know that until later, making Mabel more like Ajarry than Cora.) But Cora finally ran.

Again, I believe all of this is deliberate, intentional irony because what she doesn't know -- AND WHAT THE READER DOESN'T KNOW -- is that Cora barely left the Randall plantation and immediately tried to return to Cora, to instill in her the sense of freedom, to make sure that Cora always wanted to attempt to be free.

AND MABEL'S LEAVING DID JUST THAT! EVEN THOUGH SHE DIED IN THE ATTEMPT.

allegate
01-03-2017, 05:01 PM
I quoted that above, it's on MY page 123, I guess we all have different pages, ugh.

Another quote:



That MUSEUM in South Carolina ugh WHAT THE FUCK.
Looks like you were editing it in at the same time I was posting, ha!



That was Cora's perception. But see my above post (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/threads/4294-ETS-Book-Club-Book-Colson-Whitehead-s-quot-The-Underground-Railroad-quot?p=333996#post333996).

This section, from Mabel:
This thread is moving so fast. Haven't gotten to Mabel's chapter yet, I'm stuck in Indiana. Didn't get as much a chance to read this weekend as I thought I would. :(

allegro
01-03-2017, 05:16 PM
No, you posted that above mine, page 89, but I didn't know to what you referencing because nothing is on my page 89 that refers to that, because mine is on page 123. It is a lot of work to go get the quotes and copy and paste them, ugh.

Oh shit. You better go finish before we spoil more shit for you!

allegate
01-03-2017, 05:19 PM
Like I'll remember anyway! lol

Just checked traffic and it's pretty bad so I'll take the bus instead of the train for more reading time. :)

elevenism
01-03-2017, 05:38 PM
@allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) , yes, the museum!
That was SO fucking awful and there is a lot being said there.
Is it refering to a specific point in history?
They "accept" the blacks and are going to "help" them, and at first Cora thinks it's wonderful.
And the way the museum turned out, it was a live zoo.

Perhaps this, coupled with the experiments and attempts at sterilization represent a point in time when blacks were "accepted" but still treated like shit. People were starting to love black entertainment (the museum.) But they don't want them around. They are good for entertainment. They are a curiosity that is being treated in a slightly more civil manner, but people still want rid of them.
So again, does this point to a particular point in history?

And the north carolina events were definitely informed by Nazi Germany.

I just thought of something about what Valentine's farm represents, but i don't want to spoil it for @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) .

Another thing i thought about while driving is: isn't this story entirely anachronistic? I just realized that i don't remember any dates (i may be completely wrong on this.)

SO many passages i highlighted gave me the impression that the messages being conveyed were about NOW.

also, @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , i think you are right about the mabel/cora dynamic not being what i thought it was, and that is awesome. That is what makes what we are doing awesome :)

allegro
01-03-2017, 06:13 PM
Valentine's Farm reminded me of the socialist Black Panthers Free Breakfast Program (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Breakfast_for_Children).

HERE'S WHAT COLSON WHITEHEAD SAYS ABOUT VALENTINE'S FARM.
(http://www.goodreads.com/questions/835361-was-valentine-farm-based-on-a-real-place)
I think that South Carolina represents slaves being lulled and suppressed by false freedom, the niceness afforded them has an ulterior motive, the motive is to control them, placate them, soothe them with feelings of being "safe" (safe being a relative term) all the while covertly using them as free labor, taking advantage of them, charging them more for goods, forcing them to run up credit debts, using them for medical experiments, controlling their population, etc. And I wonder if the museum hinted at the blacks eventually becoming extinct. Again, think of Nazis, crowded into trains leading to their deaths. "Don't worry we will use you as labor" then "Get into the showers."

SO MUCH of this book reminds me of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery) (combined with the Diary of Ann Frank).

elevenism, no, I don't think the story is intended to be anachronistic; the author said that the chapters were informed by Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (a voyage to a different land and then an escape or, as the author said, an "adventure story where someone goes from allegorical episode to allegorical episode, and escapes at the last minute") but also "fabulism (http://faculty.smu.edu/cwsmith/isms_for_craft.htm)."

SEE THIS. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/17/colson-whitehead-underground-railroad-oprah-book-club)


The idea that the Underground Railroad was an actual train had been the idea that inspired this latest book. “I was thinking about how when you’re a kid, when you first hear about the underground railroad, you visualize a literal subway. Just because the image is so evocative,” Whitehead told me. “I thought, what if it actually was a subway?” His imagining of the book unfolded from there, informed considerably, he said, by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. He imagined the slaves traveling from state to state, and that the story would “reboot” every once in awhile, showing some different aspect of America.


Over time, Whitehead tells me, he dropped his onetime plan to have this be something of a fantastical story. Originally he thought, for example, that the Underground Railroad would transport the characters to different eras; instead, in the end, the action of the book all takes place in 1850. He spent a lot of time rereading slave narratives, the famous published ones like those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, as well as narratives collected in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, which collected oral history from then-still-living former slaves. “They gave me enough material, in terms of slang and the kind of food they ate, in order to get going,” Whitehead said. “So it was four months before I felt ready to go.”

One of the most remarkable things about the Underground Railroad is Cora’s level-headedness in the face of the suffering and tragedy she both encounters and experiences herself. Another sort of writer, one more sentimental than Whitehead, might have been tempted to ratchet up more open emotionalism. Instead, his book does not make a big show about Cora’s stoicism, and Whitehead came to believe it followed logically from the horror of slavery. “I think when all you’ve known is atrocity, how do you rank the latest atrocity with the rest?” he told me.

Whitehead had in mind several grand schematic novels while composing the book. In high school, he took a class called Fabulism, and there he read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Kafka. These books, alongside Gulliver’s Travels, informed the structure of Cora’s journey. “Any kind of adventure story where someone goes from allegorical episode to allegorical episode, and escapes at the last minute, that sort of outlandish series of events actually works for an escaped slave. You are just going from slim refuge to slim refuge trying to make it out.” He has a point, and the critics, who have all given The Underground Railroad rave reviews, seem to agree that Whitehead fastened on exactly the right metaphor. This, many people are saying, may be the novel that wins Whitehead the Pulitzer.

OH I found this interview with the author (http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502558001/colson-whiteheads-underground-railroad-is-a-literal-train-to-freedom) where he explains the Museum a little:


WHITEHEAD: Sure. Cora is a living exhibit, and so she stands in a display case all day along with two other former slaves, and they rotate through these different tableaus. One is scenes from darkest Africa, and that's a seemingly realistic depiction of life back in the motherland. And so there's a little hut and some gourds and some spears, and they pretend to interact with them. There's a scene on a slave ship where Cora is sort of happily swabbing - and not below decks in chains, as she would have been. And then there's life on a plantation, where she's happily sewing and not being whipped in the fields and otherwise abused by a master. And so the museum presents this false, sanitized version of American life for the nice white people of South Carolina who come to see it.

allegro
01-03-2017, 08:00 PM
For me, one of the MOST gut-wrenching parts of the story is when Lovey is lost to the slave-catchers, the night-riders. And Cora knows that Lovey will be horribly tortured and killed.

I was, like, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO.

And I think that's why Cora never really feels bad about killing that young white boy.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 09:52 PM
Valentine's Farm also reminded me of SOME aspect of the civil rights movement. The Black Panthers outreach work fits pretty good for sure.
But then you saw what happened to it, you know?

As to the quote you posted from Whitehead about the Museum, that's exactly what i took from it, but also that MOST WHITE PEOPLE NOW seem to carry with them a sanatized version of American History.

Hell, this book did some desanitizing for ME, and i'm pretty goddamn progressive.

It's a scary, scary look at where we have come from and where we are now with a TINY little glimmer of hope for where we are going.
But it's changed the way i look at this country for sure.

allegro
01-03-2017, 11:39 PM
As to the quote you posted from Whitehead about the Museum, that's exactly what i took from it, but also that MOST WHITE PEOPLE NOW seem to carry with them a sanitized version of American History.
Exactly. Like a lot of the South's (hell, even some people I know up here in the North) sanitizing the purpose of the Civil War as being about "States' Rights" and "not really about slavery."

What did the states want rights ABOUT?

The right to own SLAVES.

Sorry, they're just sanitizing the truth.

(And now they are blaming OBAMA for racism. Wtf.)

elevenism
01-03-2017, 11:44 PM
For me the most gut wrenching part was Ajarry, just seeing the horrors stated so matter-of-factly. And i don't mean the beatings or the nudity, i mean the simple fact of people as merchandise. People as things.

Other gut wrenching parts were when Cora realized that the museum gig was like a zoo. It reminded me of that twilight zone episode called People Are Alike All Over (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Are_Alike_All_Over) and i'd have a hard time believing that episode wasn't an influence.

The other gut wrenching part was when i started to suspect that the men were being used for experiments, especially when it used words like "get better" and "treatment."
I teared up at that. I had to stop reading and hold the Mrs close.
For me, when i am reading about terrible things, i imagine them happening to those closest to me, and i thought of how i would feel if SHE thought she was getting a "treatment" that was going to make her terribly sick.

The whole book was fairly gut wrenching. allegate , once you are finished, and allegro , i am very interested if you came away from this book able to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
I think it was SUPPOSED to be there, but it wasn't enough for me.
I'm doing better at explaining this book to my family in person than i am discussing it here. But my ultimate takeaway is this: slavery totally fucked this country up and it will NOT be healed any time in the near future.

Another thing i noticed was a strange dichotomy between Ridgeway and Cora. It felt like they were both just playing their parts, both part of a fucked up system. I'm not saying i felt sympathy for the slave catcher, rather, i felt that he was just doing it because it was a job, and a perfectly normal job in that time and place.
And it seemed that his attitude was simply instilled by the institutions and circumstances of the day.

elevenism
01-03-2017, 11:45 PM
Exactly. Like a lot of the South's (hell, even some people I know up here in the North) sanitizing the purpose of the Civil War as being about "States' Rights" and "not really about slavery."

What did the states want rights ABOUT?

The right to own SLAVES.

Sorry, they're just sanitizing the truth.

(And now they are blaming OBAMA for racism. Wtf.)
And OMG I KNOW! In my ADVANCED PLACEMENT US History class (for which you get college credit in high school,) we had to write essays all about how the civil war had NOTHING to do with slavery.
I was like "well this is pretty fucked up right here!"

allegro
01-04-2017, 12:57 AM
Another thing i noticed was a strange dichotomy between Ridgeway and Cora. It felt like they were both just playing their parts, both part of a fucked up system. I'm not saying i felt sympathy for the slave catcher, rather, i felt that he was just doing it because it was a job
I got the EXACT same impression. Like he respected her for managing to survive that long, and she respected him even just a little for his at least having conversations with her and protecting her. And they managed to have some kind of 'relationship' during their time, although Cora did kick his teeth out later.

It was so weird that the ONLY escape out of that Hell Hole that was North Carolina was the fucking Slave Catcher Ridgeway.

I sat there reading that chapter in utter suspense and horror, I couldn't put it down, wondering WHAT the hell they were going to do; I mean, the three of them were totally screwed, there was seemingly NO way out of that mess, each base was covered by some slave-killing or collaborator-hanging bullshit, including night-riders and checkpoints, etc. But a SLAVE CATCHER, ahhhhh, wtf. So RIDGEWAY saved her from death.


“You go on about reasons,” Cora said. “Call things by other names as if it changes what they are. But that don’t make them true. You killed Jasper in cold blood.”

“That was more of a personal matter,” Ridgeway conceded, “and not what I’m talking about here. You and your friend killed a boy. You have your justifications.”

“I was going to escape.”

“That’s all I’m talking about, survival. Do you feel awful about it?”

The boy’s death was a complication of her escape, like the absence of a full moon or losing the head start because Lovey had been discovered out of her cabin. But shutters swung out inside her and she saw the boy trembling on his sickbed, his mother weeping over his grave. Cora had been grieving for him, too, without knowing it. Another person caught in this enterprise that bound slave and master alike. She moved the boy from the lonely list in her head and logged him below Martin and Ethel, even though she did not know his name. X, as she signed herself before she learned her letters.

Nonetheless. She told Ridgeway, “No.”

“Of course not— it’s nothing. Better weep for one of those burned cornfields, or this steer swimming in our soup. You do what’s required to survive.” He wiped his lips. “It’s true, though, your complaint. We come up with all sorts of fancy talk to hide things. Like in the newspapers nowadays, all the smart men talking about Manifest Destiny. Like it’s a new idea. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Ridgeway asked.

Cora sat back. “More words to pretty things up.”

“It means taking what is yours, your property, whatever you deem it to be. And everyone else taking their assigned places to allow you to take it. Whether it’s red men or Africans, giving up themselves, giving of themselves, so that we can have what’s rightfully ours. The French setting aside their territorial claims. The British and the Spanish slinking away.

“My father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit,” Ridgeway said. “All these years later, I prefer the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription— the American imperative.”

“I need to visit the outhouse,” Cora said.

The corners of his mouth sank. He gestured for her to walk in front. The steps to the back alley were slippery with vomit and he grabbed her elbow to steady her. Closing the outhouse door, shutting him out, was the purest pleasure she’d had in a long while.

Ridgeway continued his address undeterred. “Take your mother,” the slave catcher said. “Mabel. Stolen from her master by misguided whites and colored individuals in a criminal conspiracy."


I think I DO see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I think it will take a long long time and I think, as was hinted at in this book, the white people won't be the only ones to fix it; the black people will have to remove their own shackles and demand equal treatment, etc., like this "Black Lives Matter" movement that is far more than just cop killings; it's also about better education, better healthcare, better jobs, etc. Kind of like what Valentine was trying to do. Except not necessarily a segregated farm. But it certainly can't be "let's increase the minimum wage!" That just puts minorities in minimum wages forever, instead of pushing them into better jobs with better opportunities. The biggest aspiration of the black community shouldn't be sports star or hiphop star.

elevenism
01-04-2017, 02:02 AM
"It means taking what is yours...whatever you deem it to be"

And what is Cora's, her "property" is her "freedom."
So she somehow fits into Ridgeway's twisted version of the "american spirit!"

And what an interesting dichotomy/duality between the two of them, Ridgeway and Cora.

I am glad you saw it too.

When we discuss more, i will make sure i have my notes out :)

allegate
01-04-2017, 12:48 PM
@allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) , yes, the museum!
That was SO fucking awful and there is a lot being said there.
Is it refering to a specific point in history?
They "accept" the blacks and are going to "help" them, and at first Cora thinks it's wonderful.
And the way the museum turned out, it was a live zoo.

Perhaps this, coupled with the experiments and attempts at sterilization represent a point in time when blacks were "accepted" but still treated like shit. People were starting to love black entertainment (the museum.) But they don't want them around. They are good for entertainment. They are a curiosity that is being treated in a slightly more civil manner, but people still want rid of them.
So again, does this point to a particular point in history?

And the north carolina events were definitely informed by Nazi Germany.

I just thought of something about what Valentine's farm represents, but i don't want to spoil it for @allegate (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1739) .

Another thing i thought about while driving is: isn't this story entirely anachronistic? I just realized that i don't remember any dates (i may be completely wrong on this.)

SO many passages i highlighted gave me the impression that the messages being conveyed were about NOW.

also, @allegro (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=76) , i think you are right about the mabel/cora dynamic not being what i thought it was, and that is awesome. That is what makes what we are doing awesome :)Hence my comment about the use of the word skyscrapers to describe the buildings she sees when she comes out of the railroad the first time. But I don't think it's meant to be about today any more than any other book is. What's that famous phrase about history and how it all comes back around again? If you see it as something happening today, it's because the missteps of the past still haunt us as we continue down this path that doesn't seem to have changed in the intervening years.

Almost done with the book.

allegate
01-04-2017, 01:33 PM
“They call this road the Freedom Trail now,” Martin said as he covered the wagon again. “The bodies go all the way to town.”
In what sort of hell had the train let her off?"freedom" for slaves = death.

allegro
01-04-2017, 01:38 PM
"freedom" for slaves = death.

Ultimately, exactly. Black people still call it "going home" to this day.

allegate
01-05-2017, 10:43 AM
Going back to Mabel/Cora: When she's having the fantasy in NC about going North:
In another scene, years hence, Cora walked down a busy street in her city and came across her mother. Begging in the gutter, a broken old woman bent into the sum of her mistakes. Mabel looked up but did not recognize her daughter. Cora kicked her beggar’s cup, the few coins flew into the hubbub, and she continued on her afternoon errand to fetch flour for her son’s birthday cake.Not even a slave anymore and still carrying that water.

allegro
01-05-2017, 10:55 AM
I think that happens a lot with people who were abandoned by a parent, slave or not; I know people who feel that way, now, and they weren't slaves.

Again, I think the author is setting up the ultimate irony that he will reveal, later.

It sure hit ME like a ton of bricks.

Whitehead uses irony a lot.

“If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.”

allegate
01-10-2017, 10:09 AM
Man, I've had a rough weekend. Haven't been able to use a computer since Friday afternoon because I cut the tip of my finger off while cooking. Can't really use one now but I'm managing. Haven't read anything since then because I've been in pain. I'll get the last 5% of the book read today, possibly.

allegate
01-18-2017, 12:47 PM
I fucking hate snow. Well, I hate snow storms, more specifically, as they take my power and my computer that had a text document open with thoughts and quotes from the last several chapters of the book. It did not save because unlike Word, wordpad does not have that function for loss of power. Uugh.

So anyway I finished the book. I would have posted earlier but, again, no power.

And the VERY FIRST WORDS of the book:



Ajarry was afraid to run, she accepted her fate. But Mabel wasn't afraid. (But then Mabel was afraid but we didn't know that until later, making Mabel more like Ajarry than Cora.) But Cora finally ran.

Again, I believe all of this is deliberate, intentional irony because what she doesn't know -- AND WHAT THE READER DOESN'T KNOW -- is that Cora barely left the Randall plantation and immediately tried to return to Cora, to instill in her the sense of freedom, to make sure that Cora always wanted to attempt to be free.

AND MABEL'S LEAVING DID JUST THAT! EVEN THOUGH SHE DIED IN THE ATTEMPT.

Huh, good point.

I got the EXACT same impression. Like he respected her for managing to survive that long, and she respected him even just a little for his at least having conversations with her and protecting her. And they managed to have some kind of 'relationship' during their time, although Cora did kick his teeth out later.

It was so weird that the ONLY escape out of that Hell Hole that was North Carolina was the fucking Slave Catcher Ridgeway.

I sat there reading that chapter in utter suspense and horror, I couldn't put it down, wondering WHAT the hell they were going to do; I mean, the three of them were totally screwed, there was seemingly NO way out of that mess, each base was covered by some slave-killing or collaborator-hanging bullshit, including night-riders and checkpoints, etc. But a SLAVE CATCHER, ahhhhh, wtf. So RIDGEWAY saved her from death.

I know, it was so close to deus ex machine too. I mean, how did he know she was going to be there? He really sounded like he knew it was her vs. some random runaway.



I think I DO see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I think it will take a long long time and I think, as was hinted at in this book, the white people won't be the only ones to fix it; the black people will have to remove their own shackles and demand equal treatment, etc., like this "Black Lives Matter" movement that is far more than just cop killings; it's also about better education, better healthcare, better jobs, etc. Kind of like what Valentine was trying to do. Except not necessarily a segregated farm. But it certainly can't be "let's increase the minimum wage!" That just puts minorities in minimum wages forever, instead of pushing them into better jobs with better opportunities. The biggest aspiration of the black community shouldn't be sports star or hiphop star.

Forgetting the recent history, I liked this quote from Bill Cosby:

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-can-t-even-talk-the-way-these-people-talk-why-you-ain-t-where-you-is-everybody-knows-bill-cosby-62-39-95.jpg

I think that happens a lot with people who were abandoned by a parent, slave or not; I know people who feel that way, now, and they weren't slaves.

Again, I think the author is setting up the ultimate irony that he will reveal, later.

It sure hit ME like a ton of bricks.

Whitehead uses irony a lot.

“If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.”

Yup, very strong.

allegate
01-18-2017, 12:50 PM
I would almost swear there was a post about Ollie and how he's got a brand so similar to Cora's but when I search the thread I can't find it.

Also: if you liked this one you should totally check out Underground Airlines (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23208397-underground-airlines?ac=1&from_search=true) next.

allegate
02-10-2017, 10:22 AM
@elevenism (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=2475)
@Louie_Cypher (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=775)
@Sarah K (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=3236) allegro

Went to the local Barnes & Noble and they had a table for African American History month set up. Lots of great books by lots of great writers but there was one on the table that stuck out to me as "the manager just looked at the title." I chuckled and pointed it out to my wife. Should have taken a pic.

aggroculture
03-23-2017, 11:15 PM
Just read this for a book group tomorrow, and Colson Whitehead is coming to campus to speak in April.
Very powerful, compelling book. I agree it really makes you re-consider the reality of slavery, makes you see it anew again. Also agree that it brings slavery into the present: this is not just history, but its effects and its consequences and the ideologies that made it happen are ongoing. I also liked that it started with Africa, illustrating the sudden and violent displacement - kidnapping - of Cora's grandmother, again emphasizing how this wasn't some mythic past but an utterly tangible one.

Dislikes: Whitehead's writing style is in places still too vague. Sometimes I'd read a sentence multiple times and still not have a clear enough idea of its meaning. Also, the structure got repetitive, with many chapters climaxing in a violent and traumatic note. But I found it much much better - in a different league - than Zone One, the only other of his novels I've read. I also wish the book had incorporated more factual history - South Carolina, for example. Yes, I know I can follow up the stuff elsewhere, but I think the book would have been strengthened by a clearer historical and factual framework.

One question I'd have is this: there seems to be some vitriol also reserved for abolitionists - Ethel in particular, and Fletcher (those comments about his sincerity), but also other remarks here and there throughout the book. I wonder if this is part of a conversation of not lionizing abolitionists and seeing also their cowardice or self-serving reasons (for example I've been reading bell hooks and she discusses how white female abolitionists were often motivated by anti-miscegenation sentiment). I'd like to know more about that aspect of the book and where it's coming from. I guess part of it is a general mistrust of whites until they prove themselves - as Sam does. But even Sam lets Cora down in a way by downplaying the threat that Ridgeway still represents.

allegro
03-27-2017, 12:33 AM
Re any "history," see this: http://mashable.com/2016/10/31/colson-whitehead-underground-railroad-book-recommendations/#3BgjqhWmnkqS

Also remember that this book is metafiction and magical realism.

edit: Also, I don't think there was particular "vitriol" reserved for abolitionists in this book. I think the book accurately illustrates the complicated relationship between black slaves and all white people, let alone white abolitionists. Both had great fear and mistrust of each other. Ethel and Martin were HANGED (on their own front porch!!) for harboring a slave. This brings to mind Nazis killing people who provided safe harbor to Jews. This put the rescuers in grave danger; but, the rescuers did it, anyway, despite the risks. Technically, Martin and Ethel were in danger the second that Martin ended up with Cora in his care due to the closed underground railroad station; Ethel was absolutely correct that Cora would "get them both killed." (And, remember Ethel's own backstory involving her friendship with a slave girl her own age, who was being sexually assaulted by her own father, which came to the surface when Cora became ill and Ethel lovingly cared for Cora.)

elevenism
03-27-2017, 05:03 AM
I agree it really makes you re-consider the reality of slavery, makes you see it anew again.
No doubt.
That aspect of it seriously shocked the SHIT out of me, as did the tangibility you mentioned.
In fact, i didn't just RE-consider slavery. Rather, I TRULY considered it for perhaps the first time in my life.