I’ve loved the story of John Henry since I first heard it, and I was really jazzed to learn that an excellent writer, Colson Whitehead, had written a novel about it. I am now reading it (John Henry Days) and it is not disappointing me. There are so many elements packed into that succinct legend: the struggles of African-Americans (and by extension any people coping daily with oppression); pride and strength and their limits; the shifting meanings of work and our dignity as machines do the work once done by human hands; the relationships among labor and capital, white and black; what it means to triumph over death. I don’t know yet where Whitehead is going with this, but so far he seems to have given deep thought to them all.

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