The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

The Underground Railroad is a work of historical fiction about the lived realities of nineteenth-century American slavery. Cora’s escape is part of a deservingly broader narrative that reckons with the outsized legacies of slavery. In tracing Cora’s journey, The Underground Railroad delivers a fictional account that matches its historical subject matter in breadth. The novel spans a considerable distance of time—weaving in Ajarry’s capture decades prior, for instance—but also features a spectrum of characters and interests. In doing so, the novel draws attention to all the parties involved in the slavery issue at the time, from members of the abolitionist network to slavecatchers and westward pioneers. Far from limiting itself to the plantation, chattel slavery constructs an entire social apparatus.