National Book Award winner combines magical realism with history

Author of “The Underground Railroad” and winner of the 2016 National Book Award for fiction spoke at Cabell Library on Feb. 9 for VCU Libraries’ 15th annual Black History Month lecture.

Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” follows the main character, Cora, who is a young slave working on a Georgia plantation. Cora is searching for freedom in South and, later, North Carolina. In writing the book, Whitehead utilized elements of magical realism to convey the literal change of worlds as Cora passed through each state in her journey.

Whitehead said he felt a connection to his heritage while writing “The Underground Railroad.”

“I don’t know if most of my family lived and died in Florida or Alabama, I don’t know where they worked,” Whitehead said. “Representing the true brutality and morality of what my family went through was the real anxiety.”

Whitehead said the writings of Gabriel García-Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges inspired his work, especially their use of fantasy as a literary tool. Whitehead described the magical-realism he employed in “The Underground Railroad” as “level one,” saying his use of such elements were more subtle.

“If I wrote (‘The Underground Railroad’) 10 — five — years ago, I would have written it differently,” Whitehead said, adding that he wasn’t as occupied with establishing set rules for the book’s fantastical elements as he may have been in the past.

Whitehead said the plot undergoes “reboots,” which allows for a larger cast of characters who “auditioned” for the more important roles in Whitehead’s writing process. These characters warranted their own biographical sections and are scattered throughout the book.

Throughout the lecture and question-and-answer session, Whitehead interjected bits of comedy, evoking laughter from the audience. He played Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park” to describe the feeling of being rejected by publishers in the beginning of his career.

Initially, Whitehead said he had to research and record the era’s history before playing with the book’s reality.

As part of his research, Whitehead used testimonials collected from former slaves by the Federal Writer’s Project, he said. The brutality and reality of the book’s content forced Whitehead to view it more academically and less artistically in some instances, he said.

While the book’s events don’t have a specific date, Whitehead said he wrote it with the context of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in mind. The 1850 law enabled the capture of slaves who had escaped north, although there is allegory corresponding to modern issues such as the “Stop and Frisk” law, Whitehead said.

“Whether you’re free or not, the same process is happening,” Whitehead said.“In some ways, we haven’t progressed at all.”

Whitehead said part of his reasoning for selecting Cora as the main character was he wanted a female perspective, especially since the experiences of enslaved women were different from those of enslaved men.

For example, women and girls often endured sexual abuse from white men, which is depicted in a section Whitehead read from “The Underground Railroad.”

Whitehead said he examined “dynamic corners” of the master-slave relationship. One of the excerpts he read described the slave catchers, including the line: “In another country, they would have been criminals, but this was America,” describing their pursuit of escaped slaves.

The reading culminated with a long applause from the audience, and many members rose from their seats before Whitehead began to take questions from the audience.

Georgia Geen

Staff Writer