Book Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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!