Colson Whitehead - Reviews

The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead
Doubleday
Fiction, Historical Fiction
Themes: Diversity, Schools and Institutions
****+

Description

When archaeology students unearth the unmarked graves on the site of the old Nickel Academy in Florida, once a "reform school" for boys, they unearth a dark secret that lingered for decades in plain sight. Among the survivors, a man named Elwood watches the renewed interest in the school with trepidation. To say it unearths memories implies he ever forgot his days in Nickel...
In 1960's Tallahassee, young Elwood has grown up in a Jim Crow world, but has hopes for a better future thanks to leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and court rulings ending school segregation. He's even on track to start college early, thanks to an inspiring teacher. But bad luck and circumstance land him unwittingly in the passenger seat of a stolen car, where he's sentenced to time at Nickel Academy. His first impression is that it's not going to be so bad. The grounds look neat enough, there are kids playing ball, and he doesn't even see a fence. He learns the truth soon enough. This isn't a place boys go to learn to be better citizens, or be reformed (whatever that actually means). It's a place boys are sent to be broken - especially Black boys who don't know their place in a white world.

Review

This is an author I've been meaning to get to for a while, and so far I can say I'm quite favorably impressed. Inspired by real-life "reform" schools that were all too common, it also tells the story of a young Black boy's optimism and resolve being tested in the worst possible ways, a harsh coming of age as ideals are stomped down by deep-rooted traditions and a system designed to encourage cruelty. Elwood already had a small taste of how the world uses up his kind and spits them out, how his notion that hard work will always get him ahead can and is turned against him (and not just by white folks), but at Nickel he gets a true trial by fire in The Way Things Are, especially in the Deep South. He makes a friend of sorts in the jaded boy Tucker, who helps him navigate life in Nickel but cannot understand Elwood sometimes. Despite Tucker's help, Elwood ends up on the wrong side of the staff almost from the start, and soon gets the scars to prove it. Now and again, the story follows the grown Elwood after his time at the academy, inevitably as scarred as his physical body was left but with which he strives to build a better life. That the man's life is better than the boy's is without question, a sign that hope is sometimes rewarded, but there is still a long way to go to be anywhere near the world young Elwood thought he'd be living in by now. (Even as I write this review, in late July 2023, the state of Florida has released new school curriculum wherein slavery would be taught as having been "beneficial" to Blacks.) The story weaves past and present into a rich, often brutal tale of systemic racism and institutionalized cruelty where the abuse and exploitation of minors is not only excused, but essentially encouraged. It's naïve to think one person can change the world, especially for the better (changes for the worse seem far easier to instigate, unfortunately, just as falling down a cliff is easier than climbing up one), but one can decide how to live the life one has, and - if no other options are feasible - at least choose to bear witness to the evil in the hopes that, in time, that will matter.

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead
Doubleday
Fiction, Historical Fiction
Themes: Diversity, Girl Power, Weirdness
****+

Description

Cora was just a young girl on a Georgia cotton plantation when her mother Mabel disappeared into the night. Despite the dogs and the bounties and even the famed, feared slave catcher Arnold Ridgefield pursuing her, she vanished as if into thin air. Thus Cora was left to fend for herself against the overseer, the owners, and the other slaves. But it wasn't until the new-bought Caesar plots his escape and asks her to join him that Cora even begins to consider flight herself. Caesar has a contact with the Underground Railroad, the secret network of subterranean stations that whisk runaway slaves about the country... but while the Railroad can promise an escape, nobody in the whole of America can promise her freedom - especially after their flight leaves one white boy dead and none other than Ridgefield hot on their trail.

Review

For a country whose founding documents declare that all men are created equal, America has done a terrible job of living up to that ideal even before said documents were written down. Indeed, much of the country seems to delight in creating new ways to dehumanize and disenfranchise the "Other", even when it harms themselves. In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead drags those failures of justice and equality and basic humanity out of the shadows where so many want to sweep them (when they aren't actively reveling in them; if recent events have taught us nothing else, it's that the same mindsets of the slavery era are alive and well even in the twenty-first century, and in a depressingly significant percentage of the population).
From the day her mother disappears, Cora struggles to survive in a world that does its level best to grind her down and bury her, caught in a system whose every aspect works to divide, degrade, dehumanize, and dismiss anyone who is not white enough, not wealthy enough, not inherently cold and cruel and greedy enough. There is little to no solidarity among those enslaved, even by the same sadistic masters; the system sees to that, too, as does a basic human tendency to tribalism and establishing pecking orders even in the meanest of circumstances (a tendency that is exploited to further weaken the enslaved, and which also fragments those who would see the barbaric practice abolished). Cora becomes an outsider, in no small part because of Mabel's abandonment, and it's her own burning hatred at the woman for leaving her behind that makes her initially refuse to even consider Caesar's offer. (That, and of course the grisly examples that the plantation owners make of those who flee.) It's almost to her own surprise that she finds that she can indeed be pushed to the point where even those astronomically high stakes (and astronomically low odds of success) aren't enough to keep her in the slave quarters... but, almost from the start, things start to go wrong, and keep going wrong. On the Railroad - here imagined, with a touch of surrealism, as a real underground network of rail lines and engines, with an ever-changing network of stations and managers - Cora finds herself in different states... but they all have their own traps and dangers, and all exact heavy tolls for survival. Meanwhile, Ridgefield refuses to give up the hunt, aided by a brutish assistant and by an enigmatic young former slave boy, Homer, who has a peculiar devotion to the single-minded hunter despite technically being free.
In her journey, she encounters all manner of allies and enemies and more than one person who turns out to be a little of both. Some chapters delve into the backstories of these side characters, revealing just how far beyond the plantation and chains the effects of slavery spread, how pretty much every life and mind has been distorted by it in some way. Even those who have never owned a slave or been a slave are shaped by it, not just because so much of the country's history and economy hinged on chattel slavery but because society itself warps around it: even in the most idyllic of settings, the fear and uneasiness are never far beneath the surface (or beneath the layers of self-justification). Is true, lasting freedom ever possible in a country whose very foundations stand on the bones of slaves and every edifice bends to accommodate it in its many forms and mindsets? Even if it isn't, Cora cannot stop moving forward save by lying down to die, and for all the setbacks and tragedies she encounters, all the hope turned to so much smoke, she is not ready to do that yet.
This is, necessarily, a harrowing story of dehumanization, cruelty, dashed hopes, crushed futures, and even the lies one tells oneself to justify actions (or lack thereof), or rationalize harm as being for the greater good (or the will of a God whose grace conveniently aligns with one's own circumstances and desires). What light and beauty there is often glimmers cold and distant as the stars in the night sky, something seen and pursued that can never really be reached, especially not in a human lifespan. The ending feels a little unsettled and ambiguous, which I understand was probably the point but which still made me feel mildly let down.