Years ago, I saw a documentary on Florida’s Dozier School for Boys and it led me to the official reports on the abuses the school piled on its inmates, White and Black, during its many years as a “reform school.” Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020 for the novel The Nickel Boys, which gives an honest, traumatizing picture of the inmate experience. The novel features Elwood, a Black child growing up in Florida where his brilliance shines through. His grandmother is raising him with more success than she had with his long gone mother.
Elwood is so respected by various adults who spend time with him that he is offered the opportunity to take courses at a community college while still in high school. He has a transportation problem so hitches a ride with a seemingly nice guy. Unfortunately, the car is stolen and Elwood is sent to Nickel School, which is supposedly a light sentence. While he developed some street smarts in his live, Elwood is comparatively naive and sort of believes in a fundamental goodness in people that leads him quickly to discipline. Little by little he adjusts to the fact that he is in a place where rules are unclear, food will always be awful, discipline ranges from severe beatings in the white house, to days in a light-free isolation closet to death. Every child works and attends “school” where nothing is taught. Elwood retains a sliver of his humanity and values as he works to get enough points to get out early. But they come back to bite him when he lets that part of him rise to the top. The intricate story of relationships among the inmates and with their keepers includes horrible physical, emotional and sexual abuse and this is not graphically shown for the most part, just barely keeping the novel bearable.
While not for the faint of heart, it should be read by everyone with a heart. J.D. Dean and Colson Whitehead narrated the audio version beautifully and I can recommend the audio and the book itself highly.
They Called me Bookworm 