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AUTHOR: Colson Whitehead
   


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REVIEWS: The Nickel Boys
     
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Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. 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. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

Characters: 103. Amazon rating: 4 1/2 stars. Genre: Fiction.


 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: General


    STORY LINKS:
Pro   University of South Florida.
2   Dale Mabry Air Field on  Wikipedia.
    Jim Crow.
3   Lincoln High School.
    Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin.
    OTHER LINKS:
   
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