The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead, 2019
Historical fiction Contemporary fictionYoung adult
A boy raised on Dr. King’s speeches is sent to a segregated reform school where the promise of justice meets what people actually do.
Feels like dread, grief and hope. About morality, power and identity.
A page from the book
All the futures a single building can quietly erase.
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. Colson Whitehead.Colson Whitehead based Nickel Academy on the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, where investigators later found dozens of unmarked graves.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Nickel Boys like?
- Feels like dread, grief and hope. About morality, power and identity.
- What should I read after The Nickel Boys?
- If you liked The Nickel Boys, try Vicious (V.E. Schwab), A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness) and The Wife Upstairs (Rachel Hawkins).
A taste of the feed
The mistake that doesn't look like one until later.
The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. "I’ll go first.
Vicious · V.E. Schwab
The particular loneliness of being looked past, not looked at.
There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him. And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"
A Monster Calls · Patrick Ness
The difference between wanting a new life and fleeing an old one.
I was looking for something new. I was. Because I was running from something old.
The Wife Upstairs · Rachel Hawkins
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