Path Dependence
As I write this there are 1607 reviews
on Amazon for Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys.” As a
result I will not have much to add, but I would still add my voice to recommending
it. The book is based on the sordid history of Florida’s Dozier School for Boys
where for over 100 years torture, beatings and rape were commonplace and it was
only uncovered accidentally by archaeology students in 2014. As one reviewer
called it, it was truly a “house of horrors.”
Whitehead’s protagonist is Elwood Curtis, a bright, idealistic and somewhat naïve Florida teenager who in 1959
Florida worshiped Martin Luther King. His life is upended when he ends up
hitch hiking in a stolen car where the driver is caught and Elwood ends
getting sentenced to The Nickel Academy, the fictional version of Dozier. There
with one random event his life is permanently upended for the worse.
At Nickel he witnesses and is victim of
the day to day brutality of the place that is symbolic of the Jim Crow South
and has the strength to persevere. He also witnesses the ongoing corruption of
the place where supplies are sold or given to nearby businesses and inmates
perform work on the houses of the nearby town’s well-to-do. Whitehead tells
story by looking back from 2014 and the late 20th century to life in
the “school” and in doing so he keeps the story moving. Although there are many
redemptive qualities I must warn the reader that good does not necessarily
triumph.
Although Whitehead’s story is that of
the Jim Crow south it has resonance for today. Instead of naked brutality all
too many African-American teenagers suffer from poor schools and inadequate
opportunity thus setting themselves up for path dependent events that have
negative consequences. Thus in a sense it was far easier to close a Nickel
Academy than fix the urban schools of America.
The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3B2M3ZY6NX8TS/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
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