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Loading... The Nickel Boys: A Novel (edition 2020)by Colson Whitehead (Author)
Work InformationThe Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
   Books Read in 2020 (16) Books Read in 2022 (21) » 27 more Books Read in 2021 (31) Top Five Books of 2020 (106) Netgalley Reads (33) Books Read in 2019 (2,212) Black Authors (168) Indie Next Picks (17) Southern Fiction (122) Historical Fiction (789) Book Club 2021 (1) Reading 2020 (3) Books in Riverdale (94) SHOULD Read Books! (148) AP Lit (321) Morphy Pick! (21) Books About Boys (173) No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) JanHeemskerk | Jan 2, 2025 |   ) balberry | Dec 14, 2024 |  ) LivelyLady | Dec 11, 2024 | RANK: Cool This book was ok. The biggest problem I have with this book is Whitehead’s writing style. It’s boring and bland. It affects the whole story. What’s suppose to be a story about a black young boy suffering under the school’s terrible rein, made me bored and uninterested in the book. I do like the conflict that Elwood has about having faith in people who can change the system. It felt a natural progression of being in that school. Not sure if this is a spoiler but here it is. I didn’t like switching from the present and the past. It became too disjointed. The story was losing focus. It should have been a linear timeline and focus more on Elwood’s time in the school. While I like the twist at the end. Where it turns out that present “Elwood” was Turner all along. That Elwood died during the escape. But because of how the story was written, it made less of an impact. Overall, this book is not bad. It wasn’t for me. The book should have focus more on the school leading into the 3rd act of the book. Follow me on: Blog| Instagram joeyisreading | Nov 27, 2024 | Wonderful, insightful and based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children. This is a historical fiction that needs to be read and discussed and I am grateful to my Goodreads friend Pam for recommending this one to me I thought that the ugly history of reform schools and mother and baby homes were just part of Irish History that was swept under the carpet for many years. Now I realize that this was happening to children, adults and families in many other countries too and on a much bigger scale. STORIES like this need to be told for all the generations to come so as we know and face the truth of of these horrible institutions and the atrocities that were carried out by so called pillars of the community, who deprived so many children of the basic rights. This story begins in the discovery of a secret graveyard that stood behind a prison reform school in Florida of the Jim Crow era. Developers unearthed the site when building a new shopping centre. The bodies of black boys who had been dumped in potato sacks have been unearthed. I know stories like this make for difficult reading but as readers we only have to listen or read it, While these boys had to endure it day after day and books like this are so important in todays world. Having said that we DO have a responsibility to educate ourselves and the generations to come and what better way than through reading and discussing books. This is quite a short read but so poignant and heartbreaking and a story where not a word is wasted. the characters are well drawn and they will stay with you long after you finish this novel The author does include and endnote and explains what is fiction and non fiction and his inspiration for the novel. I listened to this on Audible and the narration by JD Jackson was excellent. Another book that would make an excellent bookclub read. ( ) DemFen | Oct 31, 2024 |
The books feel like a mission, and it’s an essential one. In a mass culture where there is no shortage of fiction, nonfiction, movies and documentaries dramatizing slavery and its sequels under other names (whether Jim Crow or mass incarceration or “I can’t breathe”), Whitehead is implicitly asking why so much of this output has so little effect or staying power. He applies a master storyteller’s muscle not just to excavating a grievous past but to examining the process by which Americans undermine, distort, hide or “neatly erase” the stories he is driven to tell. Even when he’s arrested on the flimsiest evidence and sentenced to Nickel Academy, Elwood clings to his faith that goodness will be rewarded, that the rule of law will prevail. The academy, as Whitehead presents it, is a place of well-groomed exteriors and encouraging principles — a place, if you will, like the United States at large... And what a deeply troubling novel this is. 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. Is contained inHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.25)
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