Colson Whitehead Quote

The white man in the book, Gulliver, roved from peril to peril, each new island a new predicament to solve before he could return home. That was the man’s real trouble, not the savage and uncanny civilizations he encountered—he kept forgetting what he had. That was white people all over: Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep straying.

Colson Whitehead

The white man in the book, Gulliver, roved from peril to peril, each new island a new predicament to solve before he could return home. That was the man’s real trouble, not the savage and uncanny civilizations he encountered—he kept forgetting what he had. That was white people all over: Build a schoolhouse and let it rot, make a home then keep straying.

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About Colson Whitehead

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.