Whitehead’s ninth book, a harrowing story
of an abusive Jim Crow–era reform school,
will be published July 16
There’s Colson WhiTehead up
ahead, minutes before our arranged time,
dawdling on the corner of 126th Street
and Fifth Avenue, dressed in slim jeans
and Chelsea boots, his dreadlocks cutting
a clean line across his back. I’m content
to nurse a half-block distance between us
and observe. Whitehead’s walk, by the
way, is not what the youngsters would
call swaggerific. Swagger is imitative, and
the way Whitehead moves evokes less a
simulacrum of a strut than it does accep-
tance of his stature and physiology, most
notably that he’s long and lean and a little
knock-kneed. He stops on 127th Street,
and since I’m a few paces behind him and
don’t want him to glance back and peep
me trailing, I call his name. He snatches
wired headphones out of his ears and
reaches out for a handshake—our first.
“Nice to meet you,” I say. “I think we’re
headed in the same direction.” He smiles,
and the sun hits the blue of his glasses.
“Yes, I think so,” he says, and in tandem,
we mosey the half block it takes to reach
our destination: the Langston Hughes
House.
Whitehead is on his way to a landmark
place in African-American history in more
ways than one. Three years ago, he pub-
lished a novel, The Underground Railroad,
that shot him to literary stardom. With it,
he became only the second writer of color