THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead (Fleet books, 2019)
“Be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer; and one day we will win our freedom” . The defiant words of Martin Luther King speak to Elwood Curtis.
An album of speeches by the great man at Zion Hill was the only album he possessed; a Christmas gift from his Grandmother in 1962. MLK put ideas in the young coloured boy’s head and fired the determination to study and, if need be, to suffer to make something of himself. A natural curiosity and a thirst for knowledge meant Elwood excelled at school and great things seem to lie ahead. The chilling prologue to this novel gives fair warning that a harsher destiny lies ahead.
After being convicted for the ‘crime’ of being an unwitting passenger in a stolen car he is sent to the Nickel Academy for juvenile offenders.This is a work of fiction but the events of state sponsored child abuse he experiences and witnesses there are inspired by the true story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Continue reading
