This is the Barnes & Noble Bookclub August meeting book and I am leading the discussion at work. But it's by Colson Whitehead so I would have read it anyway.
I read The Underground Railroad and Zone One and really liked both!!
The Nickel Boys is the story of a Florida school for boys, a juvenile detention type facility that started in the Jim Crow days and Jim never left....It is the story of Elwood and Turner who met at Nickel. It is their time there in the days of segregation and the corruption of the school is told through Elwood's experience and observations and in the present because on the grounds of the now closed Nickel a secret burial ground is found and the abuse that took place is finally getting looked into. Where Elwood and Turner end up after Nickel is told as well. What happens to the boys is awful but it isn't overly graphically told. The lack of graphic violence doesn't detract from how powerful a book this is.
The story is based on a real school, the Dozier School and in a line used in the book, Colson said in an article I read that there were people to speak for the white boys but someone needed to speak for the black boys, and that is what he does here. But he finds hope in the darkness and hate of the time and place in the words of MLK Jr that Elwood finds strength in.
This is a slim volume, 210 pages, but it packs the power of an epic. I hope this book sparks a great conversation at bookclub on the August 13, and with who ever you get to talk to about it.
(Finished July 21, 2019)
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