Review of The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice, abuse and horrors, terrible fear, and the very real threat of death at the hands of openly, willfully cruel white men.

We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.

Elwood Curtis is a promising young man in 1960s Tallahassee. But when he hitchhikes with the wrong guy to his first day of scholarship university classes, he's unfairly sent to a boys' reform school, The Nickel Academy.

The "Nickel Boys" endure endless injustices, abuse, and horrors, including the looming threat of being "disappeared" out back, never to be heard from again. But as naive as it may be, Elwood persists in pursuing justice and clinging to the moral high road just like his idol Martin Luther King, Jr., and he is unwavering in his ideals regardless of the dangers. His best friend Turner is more savvy, careful, and jaded, while loyal to Elwood.

If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.

In the midst of becoming pawns in the crooked trading away of the school's supplies to line the pockets of the corrupt men in charge, Elwood and Turner form a friendship that has repercussions for the rest of their lives.

The Nickel Academy is based on a real-life reform school that, horrifyingly, abused boys for 111 years. The Nickel Boys doesn't shy away from infuriating, relentless, insidious, damaging, often deadly racial injustice and cruelties.

I felt a little manipulated regarding the "twist" Whitehead introduces late in the book, but the living out of an identity and living into an envisioned future is a powerful element.

I listened to The Nickel Boys as an audiobook.

For more fiction and nonfiction books about race

Colson Whitehead is also the author of The Underground Railroad.

For other titles that center around race, please check out the books at this link. For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here.