LibGuides: Visiting Writers' Series LibGuide: Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead Photo Attribution:Colson Whitehead @ BBF by editrrix. Used under (CC BY-SA 2.0)

More Information

PODCASTS

INTERVIEWS

Colson Whithead discussing the Underground Railroad
Hazlitt Interview with Colson Whitehead
"Talking with the author of The Underground Railroad about knowing when the time is right to write a book, schools skipping over slavery, and why Sonic Youth made his acknowledgments page." -Vicky Mochama
Imagining the Underground Railroad as an actual train system
Oprah Winfrey's Interview with Colson Whitehead
After reading The Underground Railroad, Oprah sat down with Colson to discuss her 2016 Book Club Pick.

Many works by our Visiting Writers' Series authors are pulled from their normal places on the shelves and temporarily located in a special display in the Browsing Collection. This collection is located near the Information Commons service desk, next to the vending machines and newspapers.

When you look at an item's record in WorldCat Discovery, be sure to note whether the items is in the General Stacks (mostly 2nd floor) or the Browsing Collection (1st floor). If you have any questions about locating an item on the shelf, don't hesitate to ask us!

Remember - if we don't own it or our copy is currently checked out, you probably can still get a copy through PALShare or interlibrary loan! Learn more.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
"Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom." -- From publisher's description.
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
"Benji, one of the only black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan, tries desperately to fit in, but every summer, he and his brother, Reggie, escape to the East End of Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals has built a world of is own."
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
"Colson Whitehead's eagerly awaited and triumphantly acclaimed new novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it's the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where American legend gives way to American pop culture, replete with p. r. flacks, stamp collectors, blues men , and turn-of-the-century song pluggers. John Henry Days is an acrobatic, intellectually dazzling, and laugh-out-loud funny book that will be read and talked about for years to come."
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
"An elevator inspector becomes the center of controversy when an elevator crashes. The inspector, Lila Mae Watson, is a black woman who inspects by intuition, as opposed to visual observation, and now she must prove her method was not at fault. A study of society's attitude to technology and a debut in fiction."
The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead
"In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad recreates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York. Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in—or spent time—in the greatest of American cities." -Amazon description

"Colson Whitehead was born in 1969, one of four children of Arch and Mary Ann Whitehead, and grew up in New York City. He decided as early as age ten or eleven that "writing could be a cool job," he said to Tom Nolan in Bookselling This Week, and initially envisioned himself penning Spiderman comics or novels in the style of Steven King. His literary tastes matured as he went through high school, and as an English major at Harvard University he discovered such twentieth-century authors as Nathanael West, Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed, and Thomas Pynchon, whom he described to Nolan as "very good models for me when I was trying to find my voice.

Colson Whitehead is one of the most promising--and certainly one of the hippest--young writers on the literary scene today. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize and a regular on the New York Timesbest books list, Whitehead has been compared to such authors as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Thomas Pynchon. For his literary accomplishments, Whitehead received a coveted "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2002, recognizing him as one of the nation's top creative minds and signaling that he is a writer to watch.

After completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1991, Whitehead joined the staff of the Village Voice, first working on the Voice Literary Supplement--his duties included opening the mail--and then writing book reviews and television criticism. Working under the threat of constant deadlines forced Whitehead to develop the work habits of a professional writer, and after a few years he had the confidence to start writing fiction."

Source: "Colson Whitehead." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 77, Gale, 2010. Biography in Context. Accessed 2 June 2017.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete This link opens in a new window
The series provides information on authors and their works while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history.

COLSON WHITEHEAD REVIEWS AND CRITICISM

DATABASES

Literary Sources This link opens in a new window
Literary Sources provides information in primary sources, critical articles, literary and cultural analysis, and biographies.

New York Times Book Review
This link will take you to the New York Times Book Review hosted on the Literature Resource Center database. It includes issues from 2001 to present. You can search within the entire publication (box at top of page) or you can select a specific year from the drop-down menu. Older issues are available via other databases - ask a librarian for help accessing these issues.
Library Journal Book Review
Click on the Library Journal link (use the one that has more full texts available) to access it through the Butler library. Use the author's name as your search term in the "search within the publication" box to find reviews of his work.

Campus Visit

Ticket Information
more...less...
See also https://www.butler.edu/vws

Visiting Writers' Series LibGuide: Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead

More Information

Campus Visit

Colson Whitehead Twitter Feed

CONTACT

QUICK LINKS