*Trigger warning: Discussions of violence
Literature is often used as a vehicle to portray the human experience, the challenges societies face and how they choose to overcome them. Still, it is also used to convey the darkest parts of human nature, the atrocities we commit, both intentionally and unintentionally.
The novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead attempts to do precisely this, grab the readers’ attention through fiction, though truly commenting on real world events. Published in 2019, the book became really popular and was even recently turned into a film (also named The Nickel Boys) that received two Oscar nominations (Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay).
The book takes place in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1962, following Elwood’s life, a black boy that lives with his grandmother since his parents abandoned him. Elwood is a constant victim of structural racism, direct discrimination and hate speech but it all culminates as he experiences racial profiling when he takes a ride from a man who drives a stolen car and gets sent to a reform school for boys. Although all the characters are fictional, their experiences were things that all black people were subjected to at the time, and still are now in some places. In fact, the institute to which Elwood was sent was based on real-life, state funded, Dozier Reform School for Boys, which was open from 1900 to 2011. As depicted in the book, the children were forced to work in cotton fields, in brick production and in the printing industry, which generated more than $250,000.00 in this school only. Children, like Elwood in the book, were rented out to work outside and generate profit for the school. The children were physically, psychologically and emotionally abused.
Today, I invite you to read the book, which I believe truly portrays the horrors faced by the students of the Dozier Reform School for Boys, and many other reform schools, and reflect on our institutional and social systems that allow violence like this to continue unpunished for over 100 years.
Sources:
Kimmerle, Erin H., et al. Documentation of the Boot Hill Cemetery at the Former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, Florida. University of South Florida, 10 Dec. 2012. USF News Archive, cloud.usf.edu/usf-news-archive/article/articlefiles/5042-boot-hill-cemetery-interim-report-12-12.pdf.
Whitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys: A Novel. Doubleday, 2019.
