What came first, Colson Whitehead says, was an idea to consider the Underground Railroad as a literal metaphor, to write a novel about black people who escaped slave plantations by literally riding on hidden trains.
In imagining such an underground railroad, Whitehead heeded the advice he often gives his writing students: Write the book that scares you.
The idea for the book struck him around 2000, after finishing his novel “John Henry Days,” a comic investigation of manhood pegged on the story of a freelance writer attending a festival for the launch of a postal stamp for the black folk hero.