The Underground Railroad

Pulitzer Prize finalist Whitehead (John Henry Days) here telescopes several centuries’ worth of slavery and oppression as he puts escaped slaves Cora and Caesar on what is literally an underground railroad, using such brief magical realist touches to enhance our understanding of the African American experience. Cora, an outsider among her fellow slaves since her mother’s escape from a brutal Georgia plantation, is asked by new slave Caesar to join his own escape effort. He knows a white abolitionist shopkeeper named Fletcher with connections to the Underground Railroad, and as they flee to Fletcher’s house, Cora saves them from capture with an act of violence that puts them in graver danger. “Who built it?” asks Caesar wonderingly of the endless tunnel meant to carry them to freedom. “Who builds anything in this country?” replies the stationmaster, clarifying how much of America rests on work by black hands. The train delivers Cora and Caesar to a seemingly benevolent South Carolina, where they linger until learning of programs that recall the controlled sterilization and Tuskegee experiments of later years. Then it’s onward, as Whitehead continues ratcheting up both imagery and tension.