Colson Whitehead

#2

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

#3

2006

From the MacArthur and Whiting Award--winning author of John Henry Days andThe Intuitionist comes a new, brisk, comic tour de force about identity,history, and the adhesive bandage industryWhen the citizens of Winthrop needed a new name for their town, they did whatanyone would do--they hired a consultant.The protagonist of Apex Hides the Hurt is a nomenclature consultant. If youwant just the right name for your new product, whether it be automobile orantidepressant, sneaker or spoon, he's the man to get the job done. Wardrobelack pizzazz? Come to the Outfit Outlet. Always the wallflower at socialgatherings? Try Loquacia.And of course, whenever you take a fall, reach for Apex, because Apex Hidesthe Hurt. Apex is his crowning achievement, the multicultural bandage thathas revolutionized the adhesive bandage industry. "Flesh-colored" bedamned--no matter what your skin tone is--Apex will match it, or your moneyback.After leaving his job (following a mysterious misfortune), his expertise iscalled upon by the town of Winthrop. Once there, he meets the town council,who will try to sway his opinion over the coming days.Lucky Aberdeen, the millionaire software pioneer and hometown-boy-made-good, wants the name changed to something that will reflect the town's capitalist aspirations, attracting new businesses and revitalizing the community. Who could argue with that?Albie Winthrop, beloved son of the town's aristocracy, thinks Winthrop is a perfectly good name, and can't imagine what the fuss is about.Regina Goode, the mayor, is a descendent of the black settlers who founded the town, and has her own secret agenda for what the name should be.Our expert must decide the outcome, with all its implications for the town'sfuture. Which name will he choose? Or perhaps he will devise his own? Andwhat's with his limp, anyway?Apex Hides the Hurt brilliantly and wryly satirizes our contemporary culture,where memory and history are subsumed by the tides of marketing.