Happy Bookers: March Madness with Colson Whitehead & The Underground Railroad

by Beth Ritter-Guth (Associate Dean of Online Learning and Educational Technology)

Technology proved to be a wonderful thing for the Happy Bookers for this month's session. The Jedi Mistress, voiceless in Jersey met with Sandy, Eileen and Hannah the Dog via Facebook to discuss the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Typonese was the language of discussion. The novel has many layers and covers a lot of territory to the point that you feel, as the reader, that you are looking into the "tunnels." Glimpses and snapshots, some more extreme than others, give an overall feel for what it might have been like for runaways and the people brave enough to help them. Just as the conductors only knew their specific job in the URR, the reader often doesn't see the big picture of the story, and you are kept on a chain line of events that takes you toward the final goal of freedom. There are some interesting comparisons to old slavery versus the new slavery that existed at the time of emancipation, as well as points concerning our treatment of the memory of slavery, our ignorance of modern slavery in the US, and our media interpretations of events like slavery. We discussed sexism today and the invisibility of issues concerning race, gender, and age. We discussed portrayals of slavery and holocaust victims. Finally, we discussed the first person interviews conducted by the WPA in the 1920s. Even though we were small, we had a mighty conversation, and even our Happy Booker Mascot, the lovely Hannah, chimed in! Next month, we are reading Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. Join us! We meet via Zoom, Facebook, or GoodReads!