New Slavery Narrative and American Imperative in Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad

This study aims at analyzing outstanding contemporary novelist Colson Whitehead’s recently published influential novel Underground Railroad. Although it is published in 2016, its being a slave narrative covering the struggle of the African Americans to escape from deep South to freedom and its reaching a large audience points out a significant issue in the context of social sciences research. The struggle of the blacks for freedom along with this dark and terrifying face of slavery, which was legally abolished about 170 years ago, is still on the agenda of the American society and it is possible to say that this is related to the political climate in the country. The name of the novel, Underground Railway, was taken from a book under the same title which includes stories of fugitive slaves and was published in 1872 by the black historian William Still. The novel not only portrays violent and inhumane practices of slavery, as can be found in traditional slave narratives, but also reveals the economic, political and social context of how slavery has become an organizational structure in the American Society. What makes the novel distinctive is its intersection of history, culture and literature as well as including the point of view of the others, namely the blacks, to the important themes and issues of the Social History of America. In this context, as a literary and cultural narrative, the work offers a new reading type other than history to the new generations. In addition, it is possible to say that with its intertextuality, fantasy-fictions and anachronism, the novel forms a new genre in this field unlike traditional slavery narratives. In our study, by mentioning the political of climate of America, firstly, the relation of the popularity of the novel with the agenda of the country is presented. Later on, the novel is analyzed and how American discourse and ideologies that legitimized the place of slavery in history are reversed by a literary text is presented through the journey of the main character Cora