Nickel Boys

 Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, 224 pgs.

For a young, Black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis has a pretty good life--a grandmother who cares for him and a good job. He works toward an improved future for himself and his community, as he signs up to take advanced classes at the local college and participates in civil rights protests. This life that Elwood has set up for himself is completely upended when he is wrongfully incarcerated at Nickel Academy, a prison-like juvenile reformatory school. He befriends a fellow student named Turner who helps him make the best of a terrible situation, but Elwood soon realizes that this "school" is an institution of abuse and atrocities, the worst of which are inflicted upon Black students.

This book is haunting. The events of the story are horrifically reminiscent of real-life "reformatory academies" designed to abuse children of Color in the worst ways. Colson Whitehead crafts a somehow simultaneously subtle and overt condemnation of these institutions, through the switching perspectives of Elwood and Turner, both during and many years after the atrocities they experienced. Very well written and very heavy, with great characters and important perspective