In early-1960s Tallahassee, an idealistic Black teenager named Elwood Curtis, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr., is on his way to college when a case of mistaken circumstance gets him sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a brutal reform school. There he befriends the more cynical Turner, and the two boys navigate a system of casual violence, corruption, and racial terror that the school's administrators hide behind a facade of discipline and uplift. Moving between the school and the protagonist's later life, the novel traces how that institution's cruelty reverberates across a lifetime.
Books mentioned in The Nickel Boys (2)
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin: “Hill gave him a copy of James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son on the last day of school, and his mind churned.”
Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Elwood cites his "Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools" (1959); the 1962 LP Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, specifically the "Fun Town" section; his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"; and his 1962 speech at Cornell College. LOW-CONFIDENCE JUDGMENT CALL: the only surfaced context for this candidate is the author's endnote,…”