The Nickel Boys
Book on CD - 2019 BOCD Fiction, Adult BOCD / Fiction / Historical / Whitehead, Colson 1 On Shelf No requests on this item
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Call Number: BOCD Fiction, Adult BOCD / Fiction / Historical / Whitehead, Colson
On Shelf At: Downtown Library
Location & Checkout Length | Call Number | Checkout Length | Item Status |
---|---|---|---|
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout |
BOCD Fiction | 4-week checkout | On Shelf |
Malletts Adult A/V 4-week checkout |
Adult BOCD / Fiction / Historical / Whitehead, Colson | 4-week checkout | Due 05-24-2024 |
Compact discs.
Read by the author and JD Jackson.
In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad, 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. 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." In 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. The 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.
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PUBLISHED
[New York] : Random House Audio, [2019]
Year Published: 2019
Description: 6 audio discs (7 hr.) : CD audio, digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Language: English
Format: Book on CD
ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9781984891396
ADDITIONAL CREDITS
Jackson, JD.
SUBJECTS
African American teenagers -- Fiction.
Reformatories -- Fiction.
African Americans -- Segregation -- Fiction.
Discrimination against African Americans.
Historical fiction.