The (Underground) Railroad in African American Literature offers a brief history of the African
American experience of the railroad and the uses of railroad history by a wide assortment of
twentieth-century African American poets dramatists and fiction writers. Moreover this
literary history examines the ways in which trains train history and legendary train figures
such as Harriet Tubman and John Henry have served as literary symbols. This repeated use of the
train symbol and associated train people in twentieth-century African American literature
creates a sense of literary continuity and a well-established aesthetic tradition all too
frequently overlooked in many traditional approaches to the study of African American writing.
The metaphoric possibilities associated with the railroad and the persistence of the train as a
literary symbol in African American writing demonstrates the symbol's ongoing literary value
for twentieth-century African American writers - writers who invite their readers to look back
at the various points in history where America got off track and who also dare to invite their
readers to imagine an alternate route for the future.
