The Nickel Boys
Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Date of Publication: July 16, 2019
Pages: 224
This novel is astounding. As a piece of writing, it is exquisite. As a story, it is captivating, infuriating, and devastating. As a lens to glimpse life in the Jim Crow South, it is mind-boggling. This is an important book which should be read by every American, especially those who doubt or deny the existence of systemic racism or still hold some vestige of white supremacy.
On
the surface this is the story of Elwood Curtis, a highly intelligent and
promising young black teen who is unjustly arrested and sentenced to
confinement at The Nickel School for Boys. The Nickel "School"
is a racially segregated hate farm where kids are basically worked to death and
abused in every way imaginable. Elwood is a highly engaging
character. He is abandoned by his parents and raised by his
grandmother. He reads voraciously and listens repeatedly to a recording
of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches. He was headed towards college when
bigotry and hatred conspired to derail his life. The tales from the Nickel
School are barbaric, unbelievable, and invoke rage in the reader. The author
does a masterful job of invoking the teachings of King, especially when Elwood
describes The Letter from Birmingham Jail. If this tale was
the description of an isolated, unfortunate incident, it would still be
heart-breaking. But it's not. History and even current events
reveal that this is just one appalling example of over 400 years of deplorable
behavior.
Since the murder of George Floyd in 2019, I have been trying to educate
myself on racism and the history of the Jim Crow South. I have read
Isabelle Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns and Caste,
Lauren Sandler's This is All I Got, and fiction titles The
Vanishing Half (Bennett), A Good Neighborhood (Fowler), Deacon
King Kong (McBride), and Behold the Dreamers (Mbue).
This book captures the themes of Wilkerson's non-fiction and augments the
stories told by Bennet, Fowler, McBride, and Mbue. The magnitude of
achievement in The Nickel Boys cannot be understated. It
is an awesome work of literature, but also such an important one because of the
truth it tells. Read it!
