{"id":8039,"date":"2018-02-14T05:10:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T05:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/underground-railroad\/"},"modified":"2018-02-14T05:10:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T05:10:52","slug":"underground-railroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/underground-railroad\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground Railroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

A railroad underground, accessible via shafts and separate stations, built to escape racist enslavement – U.S. author Colson Whitehead <\/a>literarily expands a metaphor that originally describes an informal network of abolitionists<\/a> into an actual, underground rail connection. Cora, the main protagonist of his novel, uses these routes to escape from enslavement on a plantation – from unimaginable, violent as well as perfidious, racist structures. The novel tells of precisely these, white <\/em>exploitation economies – as well as of the struggle against systematic dehumanization and brutal methods of torture and punishment, against de-naming and forgetting. And in doing so, always speaks to current, racist politics of violence – both in and out of the United States.<\/p>\n

In an interview <\/a>with the taz that is worth reading, the author says about working on the book: “The hardest part for me was actually the research. To learn what specifically happened and what I need to put my characters through to make it realistic. At the same time, I realized what a coincidence or accident it is that I am here today. It is pure coincidence that my relatives survived slavery.<\/span>”<\/p>\n

A lecture by Colson Whitehead on the genesis of the novel can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Colson Whitehead 2016: Underground Railroad, Munich: Hanser.<\/p>\n

If you don’t have a bookstore worth supporting near you, you can also buy the book from the alternative non-profit online bookstore links-lesen.de, which supports political projects with the profits. You can find the link to the book here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A railroad underground, accessible via shafts and separate stations, built to escape racist enslavement – U.S. author Colson Whitehead literarily expands a metaphor that originally describes an informal network of abolitionists into an actual, underground rail connection. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[417,401,380],"tags":[452,461,405,363,391,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-8039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-biographies","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"tag-black-history","11":"tag-enslavement","12":"tag-historiography","13":"tag-racism","14":"tag-resistance","15":"tag-usa-en"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-196x300.jpg",196,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"bunyad-small":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"bunyad-medium":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"bunyad-full":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"bunyad-viewport":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false],"bunyad-768":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/underground-railroad-e1518351867380.jpg",140,214,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"glokal e.V.","author_link":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/author\/glokal\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A railroad underground, accessible via shafts and separate stations, built to escape racist enslavement - U.S. author Colson Whitehead literarily expands a metaphor that originally describes an informal network of abolitionists into an actual, underground rail connection.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}