wcaleb’s avatarwcaleb’s Twitter Archive—№ 14,284

                1. 1. I finally read @NewYorker Underground Railroad piece. A lot to like, but suffers partly from same myopic focus on UGRR that it critiques.
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                2. Agree with author that invented UGRR myths are often "feel good" stories that understate slavery's power. E.g. wcm1.web.rice.edu/fake-tubman-quote.html
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              3. The other big problem with UGRR stories is that they often focus on white abolitionists, silencing other actors & a much broader story.
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            4. But while demystifying "the UGRR" & showing its actual scale, author implies that few other serious challenges to slavery existed in 19c.
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          5. And that seems to perpetuate the myopic focus on UGRR, as though if slaves were seldom freed in the specific way imagined in UGRR myth...
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        6. ...then they must seldom have been freed at all, & few challenges to slavery must have been mounted by Northerners.
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      7. The article thus leaves readers with little idea of how slavery conflict could beget Civil War, per @YAppelbaum @YAppelbaum/765585529807265796
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    8. And it also understates the scope & scale of the antislavery movement: the real one, not the one of myth. (See @ProfMSinha's book.)
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      9. (P.S. Having now read @colsonwhitehead novel, also not sure "The Underground Railroad," despite title, is primarily concerned with UGRR.)
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        10. (The UGRR functions as important device in the novel, to be sure. But fantastically reimagined, in contrast to realism about slavery.)
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          11. (That is to say, to see Whitehead's novel as primarily a commentary on UGRR myths is to significantly narrow its scope and power.)
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            12. (But that could just be my idiosyncratic reading of the novel. /End parenthetical tweet storm within the tweet storm.)
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