Join us for a discussion of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Books are available for pick up at the Highland Branch.
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share
AGE GROUP: | Adults (19-99) |
TAGS: | Discussion Groups |
The Highland Branch Library has long played an important role in downtown Highland. From its beginnings in rented storefronts to the Highland Memorial Library built in 1946 to its present location on Jewett and 4th Street, it has been an integral part of the community. The exterior of the library looks nearly as it did when it was first built in 1966. Although it is one of the oldest buildings in the library system, it's newly remodeled interior makes it one of the newest. The library still houses over 65,000 items, but now also features a large meeting room and children's program room, a small group room, and WiFi, along with many public Internet computers. These features, along with the library's bright and inviting atmosphere and convenient location, make the Highland Branch Library a destination for the community and surrounding areas.