Nickel Boys

I started this book by Colson Whitehead some time back and decided I couldn't deal with the dark subject matter in the middle of a pandemic. Nevertheless, my book group selected it for the coming month's discussion, so this time I pushed through to the end. Of course Whitehead writes so well that reading it is easy in one sense, although one of my fellow book groupies complained about the abundant jargon. But it is a dark subject, based on an actual Florida school, the Dozier School for Boys, that was in operation for over 100 years, inflicting horrific psychological and physical injuries--including death--on thousands of children. 

The protagonist for most of the book is Elwood Curtis, abandoned by his parents, but taken in and nurtured by his grandmother in 1960's Tallahassee, Florida. He works hard from childhood on, both at school and to earn money after school, and has absorbed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by listening to his speeches on a phonograph record. When a high school teacher recognizes his intelligence and determination, Elwood is set to start college classes at a nearby high school. But as he is hitch hiking to his first day of classes, he takes a ride in a fancy car with a black man who is stopped minutes later for car theft. Although the driver backs up Elwood's claim of innocence. Elwood is arrested and sent to the so called Nickel Academy which is supposed to provide "physical, intellectual, and moral training" for delinquent boys. It is in fact a holding pen and money maker for administrators and teachers who love to inflict pain and make money by selling off the black children's food supplies and employing them in grueling labor. When Elwood tries to defend a boy being picked on by two bullies, he receives a beating that leaves him hospitalized for weeks. After that, he learns to fly under the radar with the help of his friend Turner. 

We fast forward about midway in the book to New York City, a decade or so later, to find that Elwood supposedly escaped and has now managed to work his way up an an employee at a moving company and eventually starts a moving company of his own. What we learn in the end, however, is that Elwood never made it out of the Nickel Academy in his mind or his body. The book is a blistering indictment of the systemic and systematic abuses heaped upon African Americans since we brought them to America as slaves. Obviously this is a timely read given the recent high profiles police killings of black Americans and the re-energizing of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The reviews are uniformly glowing.

The New York Times provides a lengthy description of the plot as well as cogent commentary on the significance of the book's topic. 

The Guardian calls this book "essential" reading. 

The Washington Post notes that Whitehead has abandoned all the "surreal insertions" that characterized his Pulitzer Prize winning Underground Railroad. This book is instead "restrained" and "transparent," it's "groundedness...perhaps, an implicit admission that the treatment of African Americans has been so bizarre and grotesque that fantastical enhancements are unnecessary."