![]() ![]() What exactly is Cora saying no to, and why? Who is Caesar, and how many more times will he have to ask? I wanted to know everything. The opening sentence got my heart pumping right away: "The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no." I thought, Okay, you got me. ![]() I'd never read anything by Colson (he's published five previous novels and two works of nonfiction and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist), but everything I'd heard about the book-the way it shape-shifts and refracts time and history through the figure of one 16-year-old girl-made me eager to start. I was at home in California when I received an advance copy of Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad. Decades later, I'm still consuming slave narratives, histories, and novels that help me feel the heat of my ancestors every day. Her words awakened something in me, and I've never forgotten them, especially the last paragraph: "If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!" On that day I began my journey as a student of African American history. After 30 years in bondage, she had become a human rights activist, advocating for women and speaking out against slavery and racism. ![]() I was 14 and in my local library when I read "Ain't I A Woman?," the speech Sojourner Truth delivered to a suffragist convention in 1851. ![]()
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