The Racial Railroad

The train has been a significant symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness, and The Racial Railroad reveals how it has played a central role in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2022
Publisher: New York University Press

The train has played a significant role in shaping American culture and identity, serving as a symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. For nearly two centuries, it has been the vehicle for American national identity, manifest destiny, and imperial ambitions. Its enduring presence in literature, film, advertising, and music is a testament to its powerful impact.

The Racial Railroad: Revealing the Legacy of the Train as a Critical Site of Race in the United States explores the surprisingly central role that the railroad has played—and continues to play—in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an invocation of and a depository for all manner of social, historical, and political narratives.

Lee demonstrates how, through legacies of racialized labor and disenfranchisement—from the Chinese American construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the depictions of Native Americans in landscape and advertising, to the underground railroad and Jim Crow segregation—the train becomes one of the exemplary spaces through which American cultural works explore questions of racial subjectivity, community, and conflict.

By considering the train through various lenses, The Racial Railroad tracks how racial formations and conflicts are constituted in significant and contradictory ways by the spaces in which they occur.

In conclusion, the train has played a vital role in shaping American culture and identity, serving as a symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. The Racial Railroad: Revealing the Legacy of the Train as a Critical Site of Race in the United States provides valuable insights into the ways in which the railroad has contributed to the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Its exploration of the train's role in narratives of race, labor, and disenfranchisement offers a deeper understanding of the complex and multifaceted ways in which race has been constructed and contested in American society.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 153 x 228 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479812776