After you've finished Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad

Wed, 02/08/2017 - 2:22pm by endless

If you're one of the hundreds of patrons who have checked out and enjoyed Colson Whiteheads award winning novel, Underground Railroad, you might be looking for another narrative journey about slavery, freedom and the routes in between. These novels are rich with historical detail, sense of place and the weight of telling long-hidden stories. Their flinty, insightful heroines struggle against systems that define them as property, and also against the pull of "home" with their enslaved family and friends.

James McBride's novel about a runaway slave who learns to follow a "code" of five knots invokes oral histories of maroons, parables about freedom and captivity, and the fierce will of it's main character to live a free life. Sue Monk Kidd's recently well received novel, The Invention of Wings tells the story of Hetty "handful" Jackson/Grimke, who grows up belonging to the famous 19th century abolitionist and feminist Sarah Grimke. Hetty's nickname is well earned, and this novel tells the story alternating between her inner monologue and Sarah's, giving readers an intricate picture of slave and free black society at the time. Edward Jones's pulitzer prize winning The Known World which follows Frederick Douglass' journey to Ireland and back, before and after his manumission.

Octavia Butler's Kindred is the foremother for all of these more recent novels about captivity and escape. Kindred uses science fiction tropes of time travel to explore the dangers of living in Maryland as a free black woman during slavery, and as a black female author telling a story about slavery. Like The Known World, Kindred jumps between slavery and freedom, questioning how one state depends on the other.