The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)

The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday
Fiction, Historical Fiction
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: When archaeology students unearth the unmarked graves on the site of the old Nickel Academy in Florida, once a "reform school" for boys, they unearth a dark secret that lingered for decades in plain sight. Among the survivors, a man named Elwood watches the renewed interest in the school with trepidation. To say it unearths memories implies he ever forgot his days in Nickel...
In 1960's Tallahassee, young Elwood has grown up in a Jim Crow world, but has hopes for a better future thanks to leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and court rulings ending school segregation. He's even on track to start college early, thanks to an inspiring teacher. But bad luck and circumstance land him unwittingly in the passenger seat of a stolen car, where he's sentenced to time at Nickel Academy. His first impression is that it's not going to be so bad. The grounds look neat enough, there are kids playing ball, and he doesn't even see a fence. He learns the truth soon enough. This isn't a place boys go to learn to be better citizens, or be reformed (whatever that actually means). It's a place boys are sent to be broken - especially Black boys who don't know their place in a white world.

REVIEW: This is an author I've been meaning to get to for a while, and so far I can say I'm quite favorably impressed. Inspired by real-life "reform" schools that were all too common, it also tells the story of a young Black boy's optimism and resolve being tested in the worst possible ways, a harsh coming of age as ideals are stomped down by deep-rooted traditions and a system designed to encourage cruelty. Elwood already had a small taste of how the world uses up his kind and spits them out, how his notion that hard work will always get him ahead can and is turned against him (and not just by white folks), but at Nickel he gets a true trial by fire in The Way Things Are, especially in the Deep South. He makes a friend of sorts in the jaded boy Tucker, who helps him navigate life in Nickel but cannot understand Elwood sometimes. Despite Tucker's help, Elwood ends up on the wrong side of the staff almost from the start, and soon gets the scars to prove it. Now and again, the story follows the grown Elwood after his time at the academy, inevitably as scarred as his physical body was left but with which he strives to build a better life. That the man's life is better than the boy's is without question, a sign that hope is sometimes rewarded, but there is still a long way to go to be anywhere near the world young Elwood thought he'd be living in by now. (Even as I write this review, in late July 2023, the state of Florida has released new school curriculum wherein slavery would be taught as having been "beneficial" to Blacks.) The story weaves past and present into a rich, often brutal tale of systemic racism and institutionalized cruelty where the abuse and exploitation of minors is not only excused, but essentially encouraged. It's naive to think one person can change the world, especially for the better (changes for the worse seem far easier to instigate, unfortunately, just as falling down a cliff is easier than climbing up one), but one can decide how to live the life one has, and - if no other options are feasible - at least choose to bear witness to the evil in the hopes that, in time, that will matter.

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