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

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

Girl, Woman, Other

Dazzling and masterful

This is Britain as you’ve never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They’re each looking for something – a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

Winner of the Booker Prize 2019

‘Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain’

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

The Law of the Heart

A powerful love story

Boris Starling is an award-winning novelist, non-fiction writer and screenwriter who has reached the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. His debut novel Messiah was made into a primetime BBC1 series which ran for five seasons. The Law of the Heart is his ninth novel and inspiration for the title comes from ‘one of the foundations of modern cardiac medicine… known as the law of the heart’, first published by his great grandfather Ernest Starling in 1912.

For rollercoaster designer Theo, living on the edge is just part of the job. He’s used to wandering the world perfecting thrills, his heart immune to commitment. But then a commission in repressive North Korea exposes him to emotions he’s never dared to feel. Tour guide Min has a soul that wants to soar, but she knows it’s safer to build walls around her heart and mind. Skilled in showcasing the mesmerising beauty of capital city Pyongyang without revealing its darker secrets, she introduces Theo to a country he will never forget―and begins to question her policy of quiet compliance.

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

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Colson Whitehead’s Website

The White House Boys Organisation

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