The Underground Railroad

This book was challenging to read, but very compelling–I was so invested in Cora's story that I found it hard to put down. The challenges were: of course it's hard to read about the brutal (fictionalized) realities of slavery, but I'd already read several slave narratives and the like, so I mean...horrible to read but not shocking, I guess? But I really struggled to understand what was going on with the alternate history and I really struggled to understand what the point of it was. Would Cora's story have been any less effective in a work of more realistic historical fiction? Like I just don't think I GOT it on some level. But I mean it won like 500 awards so what do I know?

I went and read a bunch of reviews/interviews to try to unpack this; for me, this was the most interesting/helpful one, if anyone else is curious:

https://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502558001/colson-whiteheads-underground-railroad-is-a-literal-train-to-freedom