Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Colson Whitehead’s New Novel is Oprah’s Book Club Pick

Colson Whitehead’s new novel “The Underground Railroad” was announced earlier today as the next Oprah’s Book Club pick. It’s the Club’s first book since February 2015, which featured Cynthia Bond’s “Ruby.”

While Whitehead isn’t Jewish, it seems possible the New York-born author has taken the famous Lenny Bruce declaration that “If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish” to heart. In 2010 he retweeted a tweet comparing his “John Henry Days” to Franz Kafka’s “The Castle” with the enigmatic declaration “Well, we’re both Jewish.” Given the rave reviews preceding the release of “The Underground Railroad,” we think we’d be just fine letting him into the tribe.

Image by Twitter

Talya Zax is the Forward’s summer culture fellow. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.