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Ask the Author: Colson Whitehead

“Howdy - I'll be answering questions about The Underground Railroad tomorrow at 12pm EST. See you then!” Colson Whitehead

Answered Questions (25)

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The brutal experiences that Cora endures can seem unrelenting. Did you find that you needed to break away from writing the story to remember and experience the happier side of life? And if you did, what kinds of things did you do?
Colson Whitehead At the end of the day, I could always come upstairs and cook dinner for the family and leave work behind...
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The names in the book are striking, especially Caesar and Royal. How did you name your characters, and what were you consciously trying to say with your choices?
Colson Whitehead Slave masters often gave their property "grand" names to be ironic, they way you might call a dog "King." In Royal's case, it's not ironic...
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Hi! Just finished your book, and loved it. Why did you decide to have a woman as your main character? Did you feel this allowed you to do something special with the character? What would have been different - if anything - if the hero was a man?
Colson Whitehead Over the years I kicked around the idea, the protagonist has been a man, a man looking for a child, a man looking for a lost spouse...I hadn't explored a mother-daughter relationship before and I thought it would feed the book in an interesting way. Obviously, there are many points in the plot that would be different if we were following a dude.
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What inspired you to tackle the zombie genre?
Colson Whitehead Loved science fiction and horror growing up, those stories inspired me to become a writer. I was at a place in my career where I wanted to pay homage to those influence and pay back the debt.
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What's your plans after this novel? It will make you very rich now that your movel is an Oprah pick.
Colson Whitehead Once I pay back my bookie, there won't be much left, I'm afraid. I got 'till midnight to come up with the dough, or else he's gonna break my legs :(
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Among recent authors, whose work do you find interesting/engaging and why?
Colson Whitehead My big discovery this year was Adam Johnson -- The Ophan Master's Son & Fortune Smiles. He's also a nice guy in person, too, so that's a bonus!
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I think this is about the fifth of your books I've read and "Underground" is one of my favorites. Do you see a difference between reviews by white reviewers and black reviewers? I've been reading and listening to recent reviews from white reviewers (who may or may not have read the book) and am surprised at their takes on "Underground."
Colson Whitehead I'd say it's more woke vs. clueless than black vs. white!
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How did you feel when you found out Oprah was going to select your novel for her book club?
Colson Whitehead I freaked, and then felt glad that more people were going to hear about it, than I re-freaked anew. Still freaking, to be honest!
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How do you go from writing about zombies to the Underground Railroad? That is TRUE genre crossing!
Colson Whitehead I switch things up from book to book because I'm so sick of the previous book that I want to do something different. Each genre requires a bit of figuring out at the beginning, but if it's not hard it's probably not worth doing.
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I had to put it down maybe 100 times I felt such deep pain, range, shame. What do you hope we can do with those feelings?
Colson Whitehead A lot of shameful things happen in the book, despicable things, and that is slavery. As to what you can do with it -- I write. I don't know what you can do in your own life, but in most situations being more empathetic works, so...
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"She smiled at Chester, and Lovey and the women from her cabin, with brevity and efficiency. Like when you see the shadow of a bird on the ground but look up and nothing's there. She subsisted on rations, in everything." I had to close the book to think for a while, about not only how Caesar sees Cora, but how I do, how Ridgewaydoes, how every character does. Do you think about these perspectives when writing?
Colson Whitehead Whenever you are trying to write from this or that character's perspective, you try to figure out how their psychology, education, vocabulary and current mood/situation are shaping how they are seeing things in that moment. Then, with luck, you find the right words to get it down for the reader!
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Hi,Colson...You Always Always Think outside The "Trunk" ;) I imagine your research came from various sources, most importantly Your Mind... Which reveals so much about you... Are you surprised by all the Great Attention "The Underground Railroad" is getting?(We're not:) When I read "Sag Harbor" we really did get a peek inside your life...Thanks Colson
Colson Whitehead I'm very glad the reviews have been kind, and the folks seen to get what I was trying to do. It doesn't always work out that way, so I appreciate it when it does!
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I read an Advance Reading Copy. I would like to know why you decided to include vignettes of the various characters throughout the book as you did? Also, why did you choose Mabel’s vignette (Cora’s mom) as the last one?
Colson Whitehead Ajarry's story worked as a prologue, and I decided to keep up the technique. Along the way, I considered this or that character and tried to figure out what their perspective would add. Martin or Ethel? Caesar or Royal? The order was determined by how they would best serve the story, and when.
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Why do you think there are so many slavery-themed novels and movies being produced these days? In addition to your book we've gotten "The Good Lord Bird," "The House Girl," "The Invention of Wings," the movies "Django Unchained" and "12 Years A Slave" and so forth. Is it connected with the election (and re-election) of Barack Obama as president?
Colson Whitehead I don't know - as someone inside the process, I can't step outside for a proper perspective. The more African American writers we have, in books and TV and film, the more voices we add to the chorus. Black writers tackle many different subjects -- our American history is one, and the more people we have investigating, the more accounts/versions we add...
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There's obviously a fantastical element to your book as the railroad is real, but how much research did you do into the actual Underground Railroad to inform your writing?
Colson Whitehead Enough to feel I could make a believable 1850, and start writing. If I get stuck or run of steam, I can always stop and do more research as necessary. The Dr. Steven Chapter, Ridgeway's time in New York, all came from things I researched in the middle of the book.
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Where is your favorite place to write? How much time did you spend in that place writing The Underground Railroad?
Colson Whitehead Home in my office. Work, take a nap, weep, make a sandwich, work. I wrote 1/3 of the book in Florence, when I was teaching in NYU's creative writing program there, and the other 2/3 in NYC.
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I'm from Italy and I honestly never heard about the Underground Railroad before I read of your upcoming novel. What are your expectations and hopes about people's reactions to the book, especially in countries outside the USA?
Colson Whitehead I don't have any hopes in particular, except that people enjoy the book and find it worthwhile. Some context in American history helps, of course -- but since there are people in this country who actually think the UR was an actual tunnel, you will not be alone in...how should I put it...not knowing every fact about American history.
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I thought your time blending a really interesting technique, especially inserting the Booker T v WEB DuBois debates into the slave period. Why did you decide to use this technique as Cora's journey north progressed?
Colson Whitehead Those debates still resonate today, in terms of who can be saved and who "we have to leave behind." (Pull up your pants!) It's not a dialogue that Cora can get into on the plantation, obviously -- she has to find a black community before that can happen.
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Hi! One of the subtle yet extremely powerful motifs in the novel is the invocation to look out the windows and see America. This is interesting in itself as well as in how rail travel reshaped aesthetics of landscape. Would you say a bit more about what those passage and/or that motif invoke for you now? I'm not necessarily asking for your intended meaning so much as what you might see in these passages now.
Colson Whitehead There's a lot about "seeing" in the book. Cora watches the square in NC, she is watched the fields and in the museum...I finished the book so recently that I'm still engaged with it as its creator. But sometimes different meanings creep into a work over time, so we'll see!
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Did you find it a challenge to immerse yourself in subject matter that is so heartbreaking and horrific? How did you maintain emotional and psychological balance during the research and writing process?
Colson Whitehead It is indeed horrible. The more research I did, the more I realized how much bad stuff I was going to have to put Cora through, to be faithful (as much as I could) to the slave experience. It held me back from starting that first page, but once I got Ajarry's story out, the "prologue," I found the right distance between being engaged and being able to step back as an artist and shape the story.
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