The Nickel Boys
Jan. 11th, 2020 02:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenI have read Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, which the No Strings Attached Book Club will discuss next week. I dreaded beginning it, since it sounded unbearably grim and full of squick, but the writing pulled me into it; I must give Mr. Whitehead credit for literary skill. Although parts of the book are set many years later, most of the action takes place during the 1960s, in Jim Crow Florida.
A law-abiding, idealistic black teenager ends up being sent to the Nickel School, a reformatory for young offenders (both black and white, with the facility being segregated), and for orphans or others who end being swept in somehow, even if they are not so much as accused of actual crimes. The boys are subject to brutal treatment, sometimes being strapped, and sometimes disappearing into unmarked graves. A lesser writer might have made them all persecuted angels, but the author resists that temptation. They prey on each other sometimes, as well as being abused by the staff; also, although there is cruelty, and the embezzlement of food meant to be given to the inmates, the boys do manage to have some fun now and then, and to be given some privileges and relief.
The book is fiction, but based, the author states, on the actual Dozier School in Florida. The book is a picture of man’s inhumanity to man, and of Jim Crow in particular, but we also see some pictures of the lives of former inmates years later, some of them badly damaged, some enjoying some measure of success in the world. It prompts its readers to ask themselves what they would have done, how they would have borne up if imprisoned in such a place, what attempts they would have made to do the right thing despite being largely powerless and caught up in a hideous system.
A law-abiding, idealistic black teenager ends up being sent to the Nickel School, a reformatory for young offenders (both black and white, with the facility being segregated), and for orphans or others who end being swept in somehow, even if they are not so much as accused of actual crimes. The boys are subject to brutal treatment, sometimes being strapped, and sometimes disappearing into unmarked graves. A lesser writer might have made them all persecuted angels, but the author resists that temptation. They prey on each other sometimes, as well as being abused by the staff; also, although there is cruelty, and the embezzlement of food meant to be given to the inmates, the boys do manage to have some fun now and then, and to be given some privileges and relief.
The book is fiction, but based, the author states, on the actual Dozier School in Florida. The book is a picture of man’s inhumanity to man, and of Jim Crow in particular, but we also see some pictures of the lives of former inmates years later, some of them badly damaged, some enjoying some measure of success in the world. It prompts its readers to ask themselves what they would have done, how they would have borne up if imprisoned in such a place, what attempts they would have made to do the right thing despite being largely powerless and caught up in a hideous system.
