Nickel Boys: A Review
I’ll start with a disclaimer: this book is certainly one you’ll have to be in the right headspace receive. It’s heavy and heartbreaking, but the harsh truth. As we know, the truth hurts and might not “pleasing” to the mind. Though the story and characters are fiction, some of the events and places are not.
In short: The book follows a young high school boy, named Elwood, who’s too smart for his own good. He always does what’s right, even if it’s not what’s popular. He had a stellar report card and has no issues with authority. He was even going to take a college class, but his studies were abruptly stopped when he had a run-in with the law. Unsurprisingly, he was convicted and sent to Nickel Reform School for a crime he did not commit. Throughout the book, Colson Whitehead explores the internal conflict of wanting to do good even when most forces are pinned against you.
Here are five quotes from Nickel Boys that stuck with me:
“Nickel hunting him to his final moment- a vessel in his brain explodes or his heart flops in his chest - and then beyond, too. Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and en eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys.” Pg 189
“They had whipped Elwood. But he took the whipping and he was still here. There was nothing they could do that hate people hadn’t done to place people before. Were not doing at this moment somewhere in Montgomery and Baton Rouge, in broad daylight on a city street outside Woolworths. Or some anonymous county road with no tell the tale.” pg 180
From time to time it appeared that he had no goddamned sense. He couldn’t explain it, even to himself, until At Zion Hill gave him a language. We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness. The record went around and around […]. Elwood bent to a code—Dr. King gave that code shape, articulation, and meaning. There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are. Ch 2
“The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place. Doctors who cured diseases or perform brain surgery, inventing shit that saves lives. Run for president. All those lost geniuses - sure not all of them were geniuses, Chickie Pete for example was not solving special relativity - but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal.” Pg 166
“The capacity to suffer. Elwood - all the Nickel boys - excited in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them?” Pg 172
Throughout the book, Elwood embodies the teaching of MLK, as noted in quote number three. He strives to live by the Christian principles of acting in love, even loving those who hate you. He struggles with this as those in authority are doing unspeakable acts against him, but he still keeps his hope. Elwood desperately holds on to this teaching with him throughout his time at Nickle Boy, which might be the only thing that keeps him from succumbing to his suffering. He thinks of King’s letter in Birmingham jail, with a message ultimately saying love will prevail over all evil. “But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom” (pg 172) I can’t imagine putting my self in his shoes, or even King’s shoes showing love to those who spit in your face or beat you near death. Would I have the ability to love in such a circumstance as harmful as those?
The second quote I listed left an imprint on my mind because I instantly began thinking of all of the stories that are left untold and we will never hear about. It makes me think deeply about the school to prison pipeline that left so many tainted from their experience in custody, forever scarred or “ handicapped…never figuring out how to be normal” as Whitehead writes. Elwood’s story represents something within hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of young boys who had a brush with the law, or those wrongly convicted. Many had their childhood snatched quickly away from them, the opportunity to be a doctor, inventor, or musician.
My Final Thoughts
In the current climate, this book is very timely. Droves of people are protesting in countless cities across the country against police brutality with Black Lives Matter. This book, set in the 1960s, shows a young black boy trapped, almost predestined, to live within a system of brutality. He was even chased by white men with guns while trying to escape this unrelenting system. 60 years later, we see this same scene play out on our tv’s with the police. The question of this moment is what does it take to change? We’ve seen steps made in the last 60 years, but our livelihoods are still at risk from something as simple as the color of our skin.