Based on the experience of way too many boys at the all too real Dozier School for Boys, Whitehead tells us about it with the experience of Elwood Turner, a boy with a bright future who unfortunately ends up in reform school. We see how these boys endure the physical and sexual abuse of those in charge, while at the same time hearing how not all boys were lucky enough to make it out alive.
This novel is powerful and heartbreaking. It is maddening to know that this abuse went on for over a century while our country overlooked the atrocities that so many suffered. While this is a fictional account, it is based on the real lives of so many boys who "attended" this institution in Marianna, Florida. It should serve as a memorial not only for those whose lives were taken from them, but also for all of those who were fortunate enough to survive the cruel hands of those they were entrusted to.
From Amazon:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."
In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.
Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.
No comments:
Post a Comment