Akiva Reads

by Colson Whitehead

In the end I'm glad I stuck with this one, though it's very very overdue (and I'm going to bring it back to the library as soon as I've finished writing this). It's extremely dark and violent. I thought of holocaust literature (which I avoid like the plague) at many points: I can't imagine what would make someone want to wade into horrific violence for the years and years it would take to understand it inside and out, and then keep inhabiting it every day to bring it to life as a novel.

I wouldn't call this sci-fi; the genre is to sci fi as magical realism is to fantasy. This is not a book that's interested in what would be different if there was a literal underground railroad, or what conditions let such a thing arise and operate.

I got waylaid in the South Carolina section for quite a while (as Cora does, ha), because I saw the 'twist' coming pretty quickly. But once I got through that section, it started to fall into context as an illustration of different approaches that white people take to "the black question," symbolized by the different states the narrative moves through. I've never read Gulliver's Travels, but it's referenced in the text and I'm certain there are some good literary references.

"'We can't save everyone. But that doesn't mean we can't try. Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing's going to grow in this mean cold, but we can still have flowers.'"