Optimism?

Having grown up on Enid Blyton’s boarding school series, boarding schools were idyllic places of camaraderie and character building to me. That is, until sometime in my late teens. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I began to think of boarding schools as having a dark side, a place where abuse was hidden and systemic, but the veneer of lacrosse games and tuck boxes vanished. 

Notes on a Silencing, a memoir by Lacy Crawford talks about her time at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. Crawford was on the New York Times’ Book Review Podcast to talk about her experience at the school. In episode 241 of My Favourite Murder, Karen Kilgariff talks about the Elan School, sourced from a Reddit thread where former students talked about the abuse they faced there. 

It is then not surprising to learn that when Colson Whitehead did not have to look too far for inspiration for The Nickel Boys. Based on the real story of the Dozier School, The Nickel Boys is about Elwood Curtis, who is A (but not surprisingly) sent to a juvenile reform school for a crime he did not commit, in the 60s. He befriends Turner at the school, a boy who is more cynical about the conditions of the world than Elwood himself is. Together, the boys navigate the school, the corruption they find, and the abusive environment it thrives on, until the contradiction in Elwood’s optimism and Turner’s skepticism force them into decisions that have consequences for decades to come.

What drew me to this book was the way a story that could have been nonfiction was turned into fiction. There’s a certain amount of clinical inspection of nonfiction stories, where I can approach it with an objectivism, that I seem to be unable to do with fiction. The very personal tale of Elwood, Tucker, their friendship, and their endurance at the hands of the abusive administration hit me deep in the stomach. I suppose that’s the power of fiction, and the power of Whitehead’s writing. 

Elwood’s character was masterfully crafted. It takes a special type of person to remain optimistic in the face of real adversary faced everyday, and Elwood’s conviction to remain optimistic was inspiring. It didn’t come from a place of ignorance or the infuriating “be positive” idea, but more from the understanding that things have to get better, and faith in people, somewhere, to make things better. Over and over again, Elwood tries to make the school a better place for himself, and over and over again I was amazed that he didn’t give up. At what point to do you admit that the world is rigged against you? 

Whitehead’s prose is strong, with the details sustaining my interest throughout the book. I was hooked quite quickly, wanting to know what happens. The ending was not predictable, though I spent a majority of the book trying to figure out what happens. Unpredictable, but not surprising. I suppose enough time reading about the racial history in the U.S, plus the gut wrenching descriptions of abuse made the ending unsurprising. But that might be my own cynicism, much like Turner. 

At a time when people are trying to sanitise the history of the United States, books like The Nickel Boys become essential reading. It doesn’t do anyone any favours to put on blinders and pretend like discrimination didn’t happen, rather than learning from them. Let’s hope everyone gets a hand on The Nickel Boys before someone tries to ban it.