What if it was an actual train?

In response to the recent Black Lives Matter movement's surge, I decided it was time to make sure I was reading a diverse variety of authors, and black authors specifically. Of course, it wasn't the time to buy anything new (thanks, coronavirus) but I gathered the books I knew off the top of my head that were already in my house, and I had a nice little pile.

Not pictured that I remembered later: The Mothers by Britt Bennett and My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I decided to start with The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, because I'd heard so much about it.

He doesn't need my little blog that hardly gets any traffic to boost his signal. ;) This book won so many prizes, including the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. The premise is this: what if the Underground Railroad was an actual underground railroad? Who ran it? Where did it go? This is the only bit of magical realism in this book, if you even could call it that. It's more like speculative fiction. It follows one enslaved woman named Cora from the plantation in Georgia where she was born to... I can't give away the ending. Sorry, but I can't!


The horrors of slavery and of trying to escape aren't sugar-coated. I was actually stressed out reading about her harrowing journey. You also meet the people who help her along the way and the slave-catcher who relentlessly pursues her. The penalty for helping or harboring a fugitive slave was death, and there were still people willing to do it. Not all of their stories end happily, but that's real.

I'm finishing up a novel I started before this one, and then I plan to read White Fragility, which is by a white author but is important, especially in this moment.