ABHM Book Club: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
We are pleased to announce ABHM’s September Book of the Month: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. We invite you to join us on September 26th at 1:30 p.m. for a discussion of the book at America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) or virtually via Zoom.
History Toward Tomorrow: Why This Matters
In the year 2026 the United States is celebrating its semiquincentennial. At ABHM, we are using this as an opportunity to create programs where we can collectively reflect on our country’s history honestly to build a better, more equitable future. The selections for the ABHM Book Club in 2026 will emphasize historical truth-telling, compelling storytelling, and diverse perspectives on our collective past. We invite participants to consider what they want the country to look like over the next 250 years. What can we learn from visionaries, historians, and thought leaders from the past in how we envision the United States of the future? In the spirit of Dr. Cameron, we invite you to join us on this journey of reflection, healing, and dreaming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad reimagines one of the best-known symbols of American abolition as a literal underground railway, creating an alternate-history novel that explores the enduring realities of slavery and racism in the United States. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, the novel follows Cora, a young enslaved woman who escapes a brutal Georgia plantation with another enslaved man, Caesar. As they travel through a hidden railroad beneath the earth, Cora journeys across a series of states, each revealing a distinct and unsettling manifestation of racial oppression while evading the relentless pursuit of the slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway.
Blending historical fiction with magical realism, Whitehead draws inspiration from real events and narratives to examine the pursuit of freedom, the resilience of those who resisted enslavement, and the enduring legacy of America’s racial history. Each destination challenges Cora’s understanding of liberty while exposing how systems of oppression evolve rather than disappear. Through her extraordinary journey, The Underground Railroad offers a powerful meditation on survival, memory, and the ongoing struggle for justice, inviting readers to reconsider the meaning of freedom and the cost of pursuing it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colson Whitehead is an award-winning American novelist whose work explores race, history, memory, and the complexities of the American experience through inventive storytelling and literary innovation. Born in New York City in 1969, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English before beginning his career as a writer and critic. Since the publication of his debut novel, The Intuitionist (1999), Whitehead has earned widespread acclaim for his ability to blend historical fiction, satire, speculative fiction, and literary realism. His novels include John Henry Days, Zone One, The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, Harlem Shuffle, and Crook Manifesto.
Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) received both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction for its powerful reimagining of the Underground Railroad as a literal railway carrying enslaved people toward freedom. He won a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Nickel Boys (2019), becoming only the fourth writer to receive the honor twice. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and numerous other literary distinctions, Whitehead is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary American authors. His work challenges readers to confront the enduring legacies of slavery and racism while illuminating the resilience, humanity, and pursuit of freedom that have shaped the nation’s history.