POD: Book Clubs

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The Nickel Boys, his follow up book, won Colson a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020. He brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. The book was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best fiction books of the decade.

Th story is set at a time when the civil rights movement was spurring change, but progress was slow and certainly didn’t infiltrate the book’s fictional Nickel Academy where much of the story takes place. The Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school for boys, is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

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Colson Whitehead On ‘The Nickel Boys’

(6 mins)

NPR’s Scott Simon talks to acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead about his new novel, The Nickel Boys, which is based on the horrors of a real juvenile reformatory academy.

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PODCASTS

Colson Whitehead Talks About ‘The Nickel Boys’

(20 mins )

The Pulitzer Prize winner discusses his new novel with The New York Times Book Review. First 20 mins of the podcast.

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Colson Whitehead Exhumes The Past In ‘The Nickel Boys’

(35 mins)

Hear first hand accounts from former White House Boys. A1 talks with Charlie Fudge a former inmate at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, reporter Ben Montgomery and author Colson Whitehead about the Dozier School, the real-life basis for Whitehead’s latest novel.

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VIDEOS

White House Boys Part 1

(6 mins)

Harrowing accounts from three Jacksonville men who remember the abuse they suffered at the Florida Industrial School for Boys and the bitter lives they led afterward.

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What were the Jim Crow Laws?

(3 mins )

Information about the Jim Crow Laws, it wasn’t until the 1950/60s civil rights movements that the Jim Crow laws were abolished.

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ARTICLES

Colson Whitehead Talks Hope, Despair, and Fighting the Power in The Nickel Boys

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s new novel, inspired by the atrocities committed at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, lays bare America’s history of state-sanctioned violence. In conversation article by Yahdon Isreal for Vanity Fair July 2019.

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What was the Jim Crow System ?

Learn more about the Jim Crow system from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

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Florida reform school yields evidence of more graves

Evidence of an additional 27 ‘possible’ graves discovered at the site of Dozier School for Boys confirms that the final chapters of a dark episode have yet to be written. By Richard Luscombe for The Guardian.

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Book Club Questions and Reading Guide

Summary, themes and suggested book club questions for The Nickel Boys From Bookriot.com

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Colson Whitehead’s Website

The White House Boys Organisation

Hamnet

Tender and moving

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s 11 year old son. Winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the chair of judges Martha Lane Fox said O’Farrell’s novel was a “truly great” work of fiction and an “exceptional winner”.

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series View

The Color Purple

Iconic modern classic

Set in the deep American South between the wars, The Color Purple is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls ‘father’, she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker – a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.

Published in 1982, The Color Purple went on to win both the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. In 1985, the book was adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey, and in 2005 it was adapted into a Broadway musical.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

The Vanishing Half

Family and identity

From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, Brit Bennett produces a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past, as it shapes decisions, desires and expectations, and explores the multiple reasons why people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

START HERE

(6 mins)

PODCASTS

(20 mins )

Kindle Paperwhite

(35 mins)

VIDEOS

(6 mins)

(3 mins )

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ARTICLES

XTRA

Colson Whitehead’s Website

The White House Boys Organisation

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