Unit 3: The Secret Road to Freedom (1ère G6_gr2)

Land of the Free, Home of the Oppressed

The document under study is an interview of an African-American writer called Colson Whitehead introducing his novel entitled “The Underground Railroad”, released in 2017.

Before writing his book, he searched the Internet to find slave narratives in order to sound realistic and stick to the harshness of slavery even if he added fictional facts. Moreover, he read the lives of famous former slaves such as Frederick Doulgass and Harriet Jacobs. What is interesting to note is that in his novel, the Underground Railroad is a literal subway beneath the earth. As opposed to the reality, the Underground Railroad was a metaphoric network created by the runaway slaves and the abolitionists to escape from their slave masters in secret, using secret routes and communicating with a secret code.

Homework: Learn the lesson.