Michelle's Contemp Blog

Colston Whitehead's The Nickel Boys aims to tell the story of the boys at Nickel Academy and the horrors that they endure while they are there. In the coming of age novel, Whitehead tells the story of the boys by explicitly stating what happens to them in detail and simultaneously leaving out large portions of other events that happen to them for the reader to fill in.   In Michael Schaub's review of The Nickel Boys, he states that Whitehead's descriptions of the brutalities the boys at Nickel Academy endure are "necessarily shocking" and that Whitehead writes about the abuse inflicted by the school's staff with a "calm matter-of-factness" that amplifies the horror. Whitehead writes in this calm way throughout the novel and this can be seen when Elwood describes the White House in which the boys are tortured discussing the "splatter on the walls where the fan had whipped up blood in its gusting" (85). The vivid imagery and calmness i...

Colston Whitehead's The Nickel Boys  bridges the gap between the era of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the contemporary form of controlling black people present today, including mass incarceration.  In the novel, Elwood is forced to attend Nickel Academy after he gets pulled over in a car that was stolen. His only crime was being in the car at the wrong time because Elwood did not actually do anything wrong. Elwood is labeled a criminal before he has even done anything to warrant him being called a criminal.  During the time of Jim Crow laws, specific laws were put in place to prevent African Americans from escalating in society. In the novel, Elwood is forced to attend Nickel academy, a government-funded institution that is mandatory for the boys to attend even though they endure endless abuse. The education system in the novel is the power structure that allows for and perpetuates the abuse of African Americans. The evolving means of controlling black peop...