at times harrowing tale of escaped slave in American south 
 Gives great perspective of Cora of life on plantation and the joys and fears of being on the run and the precarious position of freed or even freeborn 
 the minuses for me were that many of the characters seemed to speak with the same voice and launch into speechifying to make the author's points. And, for me, the fantasy element of an actual underground railroad network took from the harsh truth of the story without contributing much. 
 "If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America." 
 Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor-if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative 
 They had gone to bed believing themselves free from white people's control and commands about what they should do and be. That they managed their own affairs. But the women were still being herded and domesticated. Not pure merchandise as formerly but livestock: bred, neutered. 
 In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal. 
 e.g. Ridgeway - no unique voice: 
 "You heard my name when you were a pickaninny," he said. "The name of punishment, dogging every fugitive step and every thought of running away. For every slave I bring home, twenty others abandon their full-moon schemes. I'm a notion of order. The slave that disappears-it's a notion, too. Of hope. Undoing what I do so that a slave the next plantation over gets an idea that it can run, too. If we allow that, we accept the flaw in the imperative. And I refuse." 
 Lumbly's words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness. 
 Our ancestors came from all over the African continent. It's quite large. Brother Valentine has the maps of the world in his splendid library, you can look for yourself. They had different ways of subsistence, different customs, spoke a hundred different languages. And that great mixture was brought to America in the holds of slave ships. To the north, the south. Their sons and daughters picked tobacco, cultivated cotton, worked on the largest estates and smallest farms. We are craftsmen and midwives and preachers and peddlers. Black hands built the White House, the seat of our nation's government. The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race-which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wishes for ourselves and our children? 
 "For we are Africans in America. Something new in the history of the world, without models for what we will become. 
 "Color must suffice. It has brought us to this night, this discussion, and it will take us into the future. All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together."