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A review by stacyrenee
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Adult
Historical fiction
Pulitzer Prize Winner
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
Set in Jim Crow-era Florida, Elwood Curtis is a bright young Black man that is accepted into early college courses but is unjustly arrested after hitchhiking to school in the wrong vehicle and is sent to Nickel Academy, a brutal segregated reformatory school for young Black men specifically designed to grind them down.
This is based on a real Florida reformatory school, the Dozier School For Boys, located in a small town in the Florida panhandle, which operated from 1900 to 2011(😳), and was found to have over 100 reported deaths (& burials) on school grounds. Kids were sent here for as little as being incorrigible or disrespectful, and then never came home. No one in power cared enough about what was going on and it was only shut down in 2011 after failing state requirements and the archaeological discovery of the graves.
An absolutely cruel and senseless bit of American history and honestly not surprising from my own observations & hearsay growing up in Florida. (I had a young family-friend who ended up in a reform school just a few years before 2011 and the things he told me about the place always had me shaking.)
This Pulitzer Prize winner was adapted into a film and released in late 2024.
Historical fiction
Pulitzer Prize Winner
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
Set in Jim Crow-era Florida, Elwood Curtis is a bright young Black man that is accepted into early college courses but is unjustly arrested after hitchhiking to school in the wrong vehicle and is sent to Nickel Academy, a brutal segregated reformatory school for young Black men specifically designed to grind them down.
This is based on a real Florida reformatory school, the Dozier School For Boys, located in a small town in the Florida panhandle, which operated from 1900 to 2011(😳), and was found to have over 100 reported deaths (& burials) on school grounds. Kids were sent here for as little as being incorrigible or disrespectful, and then never came home. No one in power cared enough about what was going on and it was only shut down in 2011 after failing state requirements and the archaeological discovery of the graves.
An absolutely cruel and senseless bit of American history and honestly not surprising from my own observations & hearsay growing up in Florida. (I had a young family-friend who ended up in a reform school just a few years before 2011 and the things he told me about the place always had me shaking.)
This Pulitzer Prize winner was adapted into a film and released in late 2024.