The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys is a 2019 novel by American novelist Colson Whitehead. It was based on the real story of the Dozier School, a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and had its history exposed by a university's investigation. It was named one of TIME'S best books of the decade.[4] It is the follow-up to Whitehead's 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Nickel Boys
First edition cover
AuthorColson Whitehead
Audio read byJD Jackson[1]
Colson Whitehead
Cover artistNeil Libbert (photograph)[2]
Oliver Munday (design)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Set inFlorida and New York City[3]
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
July 16, 2019
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages224
ISBN978-0-385-53707-0
813/.54
LC ClassPS3573.H4768 N53 2019

The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[5] Judges of the prize called the novel "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption."[6] It is Whitehead's second win, making him the fourth writer in history to have won the prize for fiction twice.[7]

Plot

Set in the 1960s, the novel follows Elwood Curtis, a studious African American from Tallahassee with a sense of justice, who is adjudicated delinquent and sent to Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory in Eleanor, Florida, after riding in a stolen vehicle to attend university classes. He befriends Jack Turner, who goes by his family name and who has a less optimistic viewpoint. Elwood attempts to serve his time without incident, but is seriously beaten on two occasions, once for intervening to help a boy being attacked by sexual predators and once after writing a letter complaining of poor conditions. The time at the school is interspersed with accounts of an older Elwood in New York City. After Turner overhears of a plan to have Elwood killed by the administration, the two attempt an escape. Elwood is shot dead while Turner escapes; the latter had in fact falsely adopted Elwood's name to live up to his ideals and had established a business in New York City. When an investigation in the 2010s finally begins to expose the now shuttered school's secrets, Turner flies to Tallahassee to give testimony to his friend's fate.

Characters
  • Elwood Curtis
    • Whitehead described Elwood as one of "two different parts of my personality", in this case being the "optimistic or hopeful part of me that believes we can make the world a better place if we keep working at it."[8]
  • Jack Turner
    • Whitehead described Turner as one of "two different parts of my personality", in this case being "the cynical side that says no—this country is founded on genocide, murder, and slavery and it will always be that way."[8]

Development and writing
Main article: Florida School for Boys

After dealing with slavery in his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead did not want to write "another heavy book." However, he felt the election of Donald Trump compelled him to do so.[9] Whitehead deliberately narrowed the scope of the book and grounded it for the sake of realism, choosing not to include the speculative or fantastic elements of his other novels Zone One or The Underground Railroad.[9]

The Nickel Boys is set at a fictionalized version of the Dozier School for Boys, dubbed Nickel Academy.[10] Whitehead first heard of the real life Dozier School on Twitter in 2014.[9] The school opened in 1900 and closed in 2011. The state of Florida ran Dozier, in Marianna, as a reform school.[11] After decades of allegations against the school for allowing the beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by guards and employees, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement began an investigation of the claims in 2010, followed by additional investigations by the United States Department of Justice in 2011, and an ongoing forensic investigation by the University of South Florida which began in 2012. The Department of Justice investigation revealed “systemic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls.”[12] The University of South Florida investigation discovered some 55 graves on school grounds by December 2012, and has continued to identify potential grave sites as recently as March 2019.[13]

Reception

At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "Rave" rating based on 53 reviews: 41 "Rave" reviews, 10 "Positive" reviews, 1 "Mixed" review, and 1 "Pan" review.[14]

Parul Sehgal, writing in The New York Times, said "Whitehead has written novels of horror and apocalypse; nothing touches the grimness of the real stories he conveys here."[15] The Washington Post critic Ron Charles wrote, "It shreds our easy confidence in the triumph of goodness and leaves in its place a hard and bitter truth about the ongoing American experiment."[16]

Writing in NPR, Maureen Corrigan said "It's a masterpiece squared, rooted in history and American mythology and, yet, painfully topical in its visions of justice and mercy erratically denied."[17]

The New Republic exclaimed, "The Nickel Boys is fiction, but it burns with outrageous truth."[18] Meanwhile, The Guardian wrote, "He demonstrates to superb effect how racism in America has long operated as a codified and sanctioned activity intended to enrich one group at the expense of another."[19]

Awards and recognition

References
  1. "The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead". Penguin Random House Audio.
  2. "Brilliant Book Covers: The Best Covers of July 2019". Bookish.
  3. Wagner, Erica (July 26, 2019). "The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead — racism in America". Financial Times. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
  4. "The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: 9780385537070 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  5. Lee, Benjamin (May 4, 2020). "Colson Whitehead and This American Life among Pulitzer 2020 winners". The Guardian. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  6. Maher, John (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  7. Tucker, Emma (May 4, 2020). "Colson Whitehead Wins Second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction". The Daily Beast. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  8. Israel, Yahdon (2019-07-16). ""The Outrage Was So Large and So Secret": Colson Whitehead Talks Hope, Despair, and Fighting the Power in The Nickel Boys". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  9. Israel, Yahdon (16 July 2019). ""The Outrage Was So Large and So Secret": Colson Whitehead Talks Hope, Despair, and Fighting the Power in The Nickel Boys". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  10. Grady, Constance (18 July 2019). "Colson Whitehead's spare, riveting, horrifying Nickel Boys". Vox. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  11. Allen, Greg (15 October 2012). "Florida's Dozier School For Boys: A True Horror Story". NPR. Retrieved 18 July 2019.
  12. United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. Investigation of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, Marianna, Florida. 1 December 2011, accessed 15 June 2012.
  13. Montgomery, Ben (April 11, 2019). "More 'possible graves' found at Dozier School for Boys". Tampa Bay Times.
  14. "Book Marks reviews of The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead". Book Marks. Literary Hub. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
  15. Sehgal, Parul (2019-07-11). "In 'The Nickel Boys,' Colson Whitehead Continues to Make a Classic American Genre His Own". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  16. Charles, Ron. "In Colson Whitehead's 'The Nickel Boys,' an idealistic black teen learns a harsh reality". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  17. "Rooted In History, 'The Nickel Boys' Is A Great American Novel". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  18. Livingstone, Josephine (2019-07-30). "Colson Whitehead, American Escape Artist". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  19. Forna, Aminatta (2019-07-26). "The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead review – essential follow-up to The Underground Railroad". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  20. {https://www.pulitzer.org/news/announcement-2020-pulitzer-prize-winners}
  21. "Colson Whitehead Novel Wins $50,000 Kirkus Prize". US News and World Report. Associated Press. 2019-10-24. Retrieved 2002-03-04.
  22. "2020 Youth Media Award Winners". American Libraries Magazine. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  23. https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2019/
  24. https://www.bookcritics.org/2020/01/11/announcing-the-finalists-for-the-2019-nbcc-awards/
  25. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-prizes/2020-prizes/longlists/
  26. "Clanchy, Whitehead win 2020 Orwell Prize". Books+Publishing. 2020-07-10. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  27. https://www.audiopub.org/winners/2020-audies
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