Problem with this article: not all the boys were Black.
See: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/historic-photographs-the-dozier-school-for-boys/7/
As you can clearly see, there were both White and Black boys there, and I'm sure the murdered ones were not all Black.
2
You do realize that this article is actually a book review of a work of fiction written by a novelist, right? Neither the review nor the novel is meant to serve as a piece of investigative journalism. I read the novel over the weekend. as well as this review, and neither piece makes the claim that the White inmates weren’t also treated horribly. So what’s your point?
51
Man, do I miss Frank Rich batting clean-up in the NYTimes. Maybe they can trade some of their washed-up op-ed writers to New York magazine and put him in the order after rising talent like Goldberg and Bouie.
10
I'm not a journalist, but I read a long time ago that one of the rules of thumb is telling the main story in the first few paragraphs, because not all readers stick with an article until the end. But this review meanders all over the place before it finally tells us that this book was about a "reform school" run by racists, who apparently murdered the worst-case inmates. Meanwhile it tells us about the writer and his previous book, the life of the main character of the novel, and the reviewer's opinion on racial matters.
7
@Charlesbalpha
So your point is?
12
@Charlesbalpha If you read the book you'll see that the racists (this word is not good enough to describe their evil intent) murdered the kids that annoyed them the most. The point, says Mr. Rich, is that Mr. Whitehead has written about the evil of slavery and its aftermath of horrors. This novel follows Mr. Whitehead's previous one - they go together. And what they tell is part of our nation's history that we still try to gloss over. And we need to acknowledge, in our heads and our hearts, all of it.
13
Frank Rick through and with Colson Whitehead, writer of 'The Nickel Boys' and 'The Underground Railroad' bring us to white supremacy and its iterations on Black Americans. Trump's racists sirens call hatred to the fore, but it has been with us all along. We like to pretend that the hatred is just in a few. We like to believe that the degrading social and economic conditions of Black people have been taken care of. We like to think that Blacks have gotten way too much attention and support. Some say that the racist chants and cheers at Trump's rallies is just white resentment on the part of folks that feel left behind. The big elephant in the USA isn't Trump and the Republican Party, it is all of us enabling segregated housing, segregated schools and unequal opportunity. This is our story.
16
@F. McB
Sorry for the typos above, particularly regarding Frank Rich.
3
When I finished this excellent book I went back to the beginning to read it again. I loved it and am spreading the word. Thank you, Mr.Whitehead, for such a tour de force. The characters will live with me forever.
28
My favorite author. Used in my FIU(Miami) Honors College classes in the 1990's and 2000's (The Intuitionist and John Henry Days). Dozier continues to be but a part of a still unfolding Dark American Tragedy, with USF's socially-engaged college students and professors the heroins & heroes still carrying the torches.
5
Listen to the Colson Whitehead's interview on Fresh Air on July 16, 2019. It is great hearing him talk about his writing process and his feelings about our current political situation.
12
Frank, great column about both Colson Whitehead and The Nickel Boys. After hearing Maureen Corrigan's review on NPR of yet another masterpiece by the above author, I couldn't get to Amazon fast enough to order this timely creation. If only more people who need to hear this fact of life, indeed shameful reality, would read novels like this. The sad truth is the very people who need to hear, learn, and fathom the truth either deny or ignore it. Maybe someday, right?
7
$25 for 211 pages? I will definitely be borrowing this one from the library
4
@Ben, be mindful of the folly of confusing price with value.
32
I barely made it through a chapter. Overwritten and underpowered. Cut the thing in half would have been sage editorial advice.
@Leddaddyswing, you missed a great one.
25
This book written while Trump the face and voice of racial hatred and bigotry sits in the White House and our Justice Department is led by a lowlife evil toady named William Barr who this week refused to have the Justice Department investigate a cop who murdered a black man selling loose cigarettes on a street corner in NYC.
Yes the murders of black men and boys are still occurring and the "violent offenders" are still "on staff" and the "adoring white crowd" is still howling it's approval with laughter and chanting when the racist in the WH spews his hatred and they lap it up.
Thankfully there are writers like Colson Whitehead who are speaking truth to the past and the present in the United States. And thank you to Frank Rich for a beautifully written review of Whitehead's book.
19
@Amanda Bonner:
except, not all the boys there were African-American. See:
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/historic-photographs-the-dozier-school-for-boys/7/
1
@RLiss Neither Rich or Whitehead claimed the boys were all black--just that the black ones had harsher treatment. From the review:
"Nickel houses white boys too, also treated viciously, although allocated marginally better grub and less egregiously hard labor than their segregated black peers."
9
I just typed *the end* to my novel about four boys who plan an escape from a juvenile prison. (Is Colson Whitehead following me? Probably not.) I taught at such a place, south of Tampa, for many years. I went there every day, hoping to make a difference. You can't look away once you see the face of it. You gotta help the kids. All kids. Thank you, Mr Whitehead and many congrats on your great work. Nancy Nau Sullivan
19
There's only one problem: the people who most need to read this book and others like it will NEVER, ever be persuaded, by any force on earth, to read a single page of it. They will never even hear its title mentioned, much less will their children ever encounter it in their whites-only private schools or their still-segregated "public" schools. The people who will read it are already convinced of it veracity. The people who will never read it, if informed of its existence, will sneeringly dismiss it as lies and total fiction.
44
@Judith Testa I think you're wrong about the private schools. Students will be assigned this book in private schools and in public schools that are in progressive towns/
5
@Judith Testa
Hi Judith - I want you to feel some hope in that on my children's summer reading list is Colson Whiteheads' previous novel, The Underground Railroad. Also my daughter was assigned Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in 10th grade and she has used parts of this book to have some challenging discussions with her not so woke relatives. This is in a predominantly white school district. As a public school teacher, I have to believe that education will help to make the changes we need in our country.
18
@Judith Testa, it's good thing that writers don't fret about the idea that people most in need of reading their work won't read them. We'd have a gazillion fewer great books if they fell for that.
8
Interesting that at times like these we get writers like Colson Whitehead and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Perhaps it's the same principle that gives us such outstanding investigative reporting while Individual #1 rages about fake news and enemies of the people.
13
I just finished this book. It is excellent and the ending very well done.
4
We pick this up on Saturday, it's sure to be a knockout!
1
Colson Whitehead is about to scare me to death. Again. Looking forward to the trip.
20
What a review! Just bought the book. I'm a huge fan of Whitehead's to begin with. The Nickel Boys looks great.
12
Yeah, Trump, tell us again why pandering to white supremacists makes American great?
42
Colson Whitehead writes beautifully and effectively frames historical context in his novels. I will be picking up my copy tomorrow at my local book shop and will look forward to the journey he will take me on.
21
Well before I arrived at the serendipitous mention of Atticus Finch in Frank Rich’s sublime review, I wondered: when will books like this and Underground Railroad take its place next to the To Kill a Mockingbirds and Grapes of Wraths that so frequently populate high school required reading lists? The books by Mr. Whitehead and both his contemporaries and literary forebears are every bit the classics that I was compelled to read when I was a student. Yet I fear that they will never achieve the same status, despite the fact that schoolchildren of all stripes, but especially white ones, who have been so carefully shielded from it, need to come face to face with the heart rending racial horrors of this country’s none too distant past.
95
Marc is right. Only when books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath are removed from high school reading lists and replaced by The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad will students be able to understand the reality of race and injustice in America. What could Steinbeck and Lee possibly have to say that isn't being said more truthfully and relevantly by Mr. Whitehead today?
38
@B Morrison
Don't remove "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Grapes of Wrath"......add Colson Whitehead's books to the list. I started reading "The Nickel Boys" last night. It is superbly written as well as terrifying in its truth.
22
@B Morrison Your comment is myopic. TKAM and GOW should not be removed instead The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad should be added to the reading lists. Great literature is great forever and has something to say to every generation.
20
I grew up in central Florida. As a girl, I remember asking my father about the Marianna "School" for Boys, the boogey stew down the road, the place for bad boys who sassed their teachers and stayed out all night. In the late 70s, my father was a private detective who found lost kids, mostly custody abductions, but sometimes not. How many of his searches were literal dead ends, I wonder. How many ended here?
39
As praiseworthy as it is, Rich's review doesn't do justice to the book.
6
There was a TV series about this kind of "reform school" a few years back. does anyone recall the name? Without having read Whitehead's book, I imagine the two schools were much the same.
3
I'll read anything at all that's written by Frank Rich. This piece reminds me why (and reminds me, too, to get hold of this book). The breadth and depth of his knowledge and references, especially in his old Op-Ed column for the Times, are rich and astonishing.
44
I'll read anything at all thats written by Colson Whitehead. Underground Railroad was absolutely one of the best books of the year, a magnificent, imaginative and groundbreaking piece of literature.
31
@kath I read and reread The Underground Railroad's first chapter —'Akarry,' less than six pages long — because I can't imagine anything more lucid, heartbreaking and stunningly beautiful.
Sounds like important stuff for us to reckon with. I'd like to see someone do a non-fiction treatment of the subject, as this topic really needs some serious research to do justice to the real life children who had to suffer through these atrocities.
40
@Timothy
In his Acknowledgments, Whitehead mentions a number of non-fiction resources, including "Ben Montgomery's exhaustive reporting in the Tampa Bay Times" and the work done by archaeology students at the University of South Florida, available at the school website.
7
Rich's review sucks out and underlines the historical and political relevance of Nickel Boys, but this review isn't close to literary criticism. Should it be? Whitehead's career as a novelist implies that he wants to be considered as an imaginative artist, not as what used to be called the "protest novelist" Rich makes him into. Rich doesn't discuss the quality of characterization in this brief book, largely ignores a major figure in Elwood's life, and doesn't treat the last third of the novel that is set, not in Florida, but in New York City. The kind of review Rich has written will, no doubt, help Whitehead sell more books, but is that really the function of the New York Times Book Review?
20
@araliki
So...you can write better criticism? So write it .... (Don't let your judgement of others' work show, tho ....)
5
@araliki Context is everything. So the answer is yes.
3
@ETBeMe. Done. Open Letters Review.
1
Frank Rich is back! Huzzah!!!
70