Barry Jenkins: I Want To Unpack The Generational Trauma of Slavery
The ‘Underground’ director tells Momentum how his Amazon Prime series tells a different slavery story.
Barry Jenkins’ 10-part adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad had me drinking wine, burning candles, chanting psalms, and asking for guidance on ancestral wound healing. Jenkins won an Academy Award in 2017 for the film Moonlight. In his new Amazon Prime series, he explores the impact and violence of slavery on the human soul.
Underground takes us on the journey of protagonist Cora (Thuso Mbedu) and her escape from the brutality of chattel slavery using a literal underground railway line. Her harrowing story begins on a Georgia plantation and forces us to take a hard look at the dreadful social, cultural, and political impediments placed on Black people whether enslaved, runaway, or freeborn.
Jenkins talks to MOMENTUM’s Nadine Drummond about this groundbreaking series:
MOMENTUM: I watched all 10 episodes of the Underground series, and it made me want to have this deep drive and desire to connect. Was that your intention?
Jenkins: When you make art, you do hope that it moves people to experience a range of emotions…
