Gateway to Freedom: Space Writing and Identity Construction in the Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, with its profound insights both into historical and current issues, has won several literary awards and accolades up to now. It tells a story of an enslaved black woman Cora, making her way to freedom from Georgia plantation through the underground railroad. By utilizing “the underground railroad” as a core spatial metaphor, the writer deliberately portrays the physical space combined with the power in the space confronted by the protagonist Cora, constructs the psychological space with resistance against racism and patriarchy and creates the “third space” with the interplay of the physical and psychological ones, which collaboratively show the protagonist Cora’s dynamic process of identity construction from marginalization, confusion and search for freedom in the end. Thus, this essay analyzes the active interaction between space and Cora’s identity to focus on the black spirits in the African community and explores the possibility of equality among different races.