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

[allegro]

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]

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 is done i think, and @allegate 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]

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]

idk @allegro . 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]

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 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]

what happened to her mother?
-louie

[allegro]

what happened to her mother?
-louie

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

[allegro]

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]

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, it won the Fiction Pulitzer in 2016. But, that can be discussed in another thread.

[Louie_Cypher]

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]

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]

@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]

@allegro also i love your new avatar pic

[allegro]

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]

@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]

By the way ... you can download the "Kindle" app to your PC HERE and for your MAC HERE. 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]

By the way ... you can download the "Kindle" app to your PC HERE and for your MAC HERE. 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Hell yes. I have some of that highlighted. I have SO much highlighted for discussion.

[elevenism]

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]

The first question, too, is: Why was the slave ship called "The Nanny?"

Any particular message in that?

[elevenism]

Okay, the Nanny. Of course there is a message in it, but i shall have to look at the text

[allegro]

@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. Possible?

[elevenism]

The first question, too, is: Why was the slave ship called "The Nanny?"

Any particular message in that?

There are, if i remember correctly, more than one messages involved in the ship's name.

[allegro]

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]

@elevenism, 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]

Sounds like we are in fact discussing it.

Did you finish the book?

I have to go check my Crockpot.