02881cam a2200421 i 4500 428588562 TxAuBib 20200624120000.0 180910s2019||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2018042961 9780385537070 $24.95 0385537077 $24.95 (OCoLC)1051775497 TxAuBib rda Whitehead, Colson, 1969- The nickel boys : a novel / Colson Whitehead. First edition. New York : Doubleday, [2019] 213 pages ; 22 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier 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."00In 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.00The 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. 20200624. African American teenagers Fiction. African American teenagers United States Fiction. Abuse of administrative power Fiction. African American boys Abuse of Fiction. Reformatories Florida Fiction. Reformatories Fiction. African Americans Segregation United States Fiction. Large type books. Historical fiction. Racism Fiction. Florida Fiction. Frenchtown (Tallahassee, Fla.) Fiction. Bildungsromans.