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The nickel boys / Colson Whitehead.

The nickel boys / Colson Whitehead.
Item Information
Shelf Location Collection Volume Ref. Branch Status Due Date
AF WHIT
Adult Fiction   Bankstown . . Available .  
AF WHIT
Adult Fiction   Campsie . . Available .  
. Catalogue Record 1170788 ItemInfo . Catalogue Record 1170788 ItemInfo Top of page .
Catalogue Information
Field name Details
ISBN 9780708899434 (paperback)
Name Whitehead, Colson, 1969- author.
Title The nickel boys / Colson Whitehead.
Published London : Fleet, [2019]
©2019
Description 211 pages ; 24 cm
Notes "The Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad"--Cover.
Summary As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides physical, intellectual and moral training so the delinquent boys in their charge can become honorable and honest men. In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear out back. Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you". His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.
Subjects African American teenagers -- Fiction
African Americans -- Segregation -- United States -- Fiction
Reformatories -- Florida -- Fiction
Racism -- United States -- Fiction
United States -- Race relations -- Fiction
Florida -- Fiction
Genre Historical fiction
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Catalogue Information 1170788 . Catalogue Information 1170788 Top of page .
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