A review by inkdrunkmoth
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 

Going into this book you know it’s not going to end well. There’s no way a story about the institutions that were once common place as the one in this book. And yet, you have a hope. Because the book gives you small peek into the future of Elwood. Elwood survived. He wasn’t one of the boys buried on boot hill out back of the Nickel Academy. You’ll go through it with him, live the trauma and abuse he experienced in the time of the Civil Rights Movement, of Jim Crow. Elwood is a smart kid who’s life was just starting, he was going to be the first person in his family to go to college, and early at that when he stuck out his thumb to hitch a ride on his first day of class. He wouldn’t know until the cop was pulling them over that the car was stolen. It didn’t matter he was only hitchhiking. He was sentenced to Nickel Academy. There, Elwood learns the hard way to keep his head down, to not cause problems even if it’s for the betterment of others. He is beaten and watches boys disappear. He sees the difference in how the white boys are treated and how those of color are treated. He befriends Turner, another boy there and they keep each other sane while watching out for the other. 

This book is important, it’s part of the history we need to acknowledge and do better about. We still throw away boys of color into institutions like this, not giving them a chance to become men. We see the man Elwood turns into, how careful he is now, how he still tries to keep moving up and not let his past get him, but even he sees the patterns and knows that he’s broken and can’t exactly move past it. In the end, when the truth comes out and the bodies are found on boot hill Elwood has to face the truth and come forward as who he really is. But he doesn’t have to do it alone, though he’s avoided the boys from Nickel all this time. I highly recommend this book, though it will set your gut in knots. It’s too important to not to read. The author brought together this story that might not be fully true, but it’s true in the sense that Elwood is the boys from schools like this. He is real in the fact his trauma lives on in the others who lived this life and those now who face jail time for minor offenses at such a young age. And the end? It’ll leave you gasping and wanting to yell out at the twist you don’t see coming.