Time July 8, 2019Culture
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Whitehead in New York City at 16
with his brother Clarke; on a family
vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica, at
18; and in the 1991 Harvard yearbooksocial climate. In a moment when Sen-
ate majority leader Mitch McConnell
has made headlines for discrediting the
need for slavery reparations and former
Vice President and current presidential
candidate Joe Biden is under fire for ex-
cusing his past work with segregationists,
Whitehead’s books are a vital reminder
that American racism is far from bygone.
“I had never read anything with an en-
slaved person as a main character where
I really felt that sense of dread, claustro-
phobia and the narrowing of choices,”
recalls two-time National Book Award
winner Jesmyn Ward, who served on the
jury the year The Under ground Railroad
won. “I felt the book could be a break-
through experience for some people.”and sixth writer ever to win both a Na-
tional Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for
the same novel. The book, which imagines
an actual railroad for the transportation of
enslaved people in search of freedom, was
also an Oprah’s Book Club selection, sold
over a million copies and earned the praise
of President Obama. Barry Jenkins, the
Oscar-winning director of Moon-
light and If Beale Street Could Talk,
is adapting it into a limited series.
Where do you go after that?
For Whitehead, it’s the era of Jim
Crow. His next novel, The Nickel
Boys, out July 16, follows two boys
struggling through their sentences
at an abusive reform school under
the specter of segregation in the
1960s. It’s a book that will further
cement his place in the pantheon of
influential American writers.
He has written seven books of
fiction and two books of nonfiction
over a 20-year career. And even before
The Underground Railroad, he had earned
accolades and become a best seller. Ex-
plorations of race and history have been
a through line from his early works—his
first and second novels, The Intuition-
ist and John Henry Days—to the present.
But Whitehead is unwilling to be boxed
in by any school of thinking, any mode of
creating. He has also written satire (Apex
Hides the Hurt), zombie horror (Zone One)
and a hilarious non fiction book on poker
(The Noble Hustle). George Saunders, an
acclaimed contemporary, writes to TIME:
“He is a splendidly talented writer, with
more range than any other American nov-
elist currently working—he can be funny,
lyrical, satirical, earnest—whatever is
needed by the work.”
Though it’s dialed up or down in each
book, I read a constant thread of humor in
his work, that he’s having a damn fine time
creating it and, furthermore, that he’s in
command of both his subject and the con-
ventions of any given genre , which allows
him to transform them.
Whitehead’s two most recent novels
stand apart in that they most directly
satisfy a mandate set out by W.E.B.
Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP, for
black writers to create work in service
of justice. Books about the past have al-
ways helped us understand our present;
Whitehead’s in particular feel crucial to
understanding our current cultural and
As we approach the home of one of
the most famous black writers ever, I tell
Whitehead that it now houses the I, Too,
Arts Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to
nurturing voices from under represented
communities in the arts—one I’ve worked
with as an author. The program directortour of the home that today smellswood floors to high gloss. Whiteheadcoat in the hallway (“I didn’t wantwalks us past a front room adorned
with a grand piano and Hughes’
typewriter perched on the ledge
above a fireplace. Whitehead asks
questions, idles for a moment in
each room, taking it in. He seems
to reflect on the importance of Hughes’
legacy, of him moving through the space
of a writer who made space for him.
One of Hughes’ most famous poems is
“Harlem”—named for this neighborhood
that birthed African-American literature’s
most storied renaissance. The poem be-
gins with the verse: “What happens to a
dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a
raisin in the sun?” Hughes was referenc-
ing the dreams of African Americans in
Jim Crow America, but his question could
also be asked of an author’s dreams. The
most grand of those feature critical ac-
claim, awards, strong sales and, for an un-
common few, a place in the zeitgeist. For
most writers, those kinds of dreams are
deferred, sometimes forever. For White-
head, who is just 49, they are a rare reality.
If greatness is excellence sustained
over time, then without question, White-
head is one of the greatest of his genera-
tion. In fact, figuring his age, acclaim, pro-
ductivity and consistency, he is one of the
greatest American writers alive.Arch colson chipp WhiteheAd went
by Chipp as a kid, then deeming the name
too “preppy,” switched over to Colson at- He learned only a few years ago that
Colson, the name of his maternal grand-
father, was also the name of an enslaved
Virginia ancestor who purchased his and
his daughter’s freedom.
Whitehead was the third of four chil-
dren, with two older sisters and a brother
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