POD: Book Clubs

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The Nickel Boys, his follow up book, won Colson a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020. He brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. The book was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best fiction books of the decade.

Th story is set at a time when the civil rights movement was spurring change, but progress was slow and certainly didn’t infiltrate the book’s fictional Nickel Academy where much of the story takes place. The Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school for boys, is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

START HERE

Colson Whitehead On ‘The Nickel Boys’

(6 mins)

NPR’s Scott Simon talks to acclaimed novelist Colson Whitehead about his new novel, The Nickel Boys, which is based on the horrors of a real juvenile reformatory academy.

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PODCASTS

Colson Whitehead Talks About ‘The Nickel Boys’

(20 mins )

The Pulitzer Prize winner discusses his new novel with The New York Times Book Review. First 20 mins of the podcast.

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Colson Whitehead Exhumes The Past In ‘The Nickel Boys’

(35 mins)

Hear first hand accounts from former White House Boys. A1 talks with Charlie Fudge a former inmate at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, reporter Ben Montgomery and author Colson Whitehead about the Dozier School, the real-life basis for Whitehead’s latest novel.

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VIDEOS

White House Boys Part 1

(6 mins)

Harrowing accounts from three Jacksonville men who remember the abuse they suffered at the Florida Industrial School for Boys and the bitter lives they led afterward.

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What were the Jim Crow Laws?

(3 mins )

Information about the Jim Crow Laws, it wasn’t until the 1950/60s civil rights movements that the Jim Crow laws were abolished.

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ARTICLES

Colson Whitehead Talks Hope, Despair, and Fighting the Power in The Nickel Boys

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s new novel, inspired by the atrocities committed at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, lays bare America’s history of state-sanctioned violence. In conversation article by Yahdon Isreal for Vanity Fair July 2019.

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What was the Jim Crow System ?

Learn more about the Jim Crow system from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

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Florida reform school yields evidence of more graves

Evidence of an additional 27 ‘possible’ graves discovered at the site of Dozier School for Boys confirms that the final chapters of a dark episode have yet to be written. By Richard Luscombe for The Guardian.

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Book Club Questions and Reading Guide

Summary, themes and suggested book club questions for The Nickel Boys From Bookriot.com

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Colson Whitehead’s Website

The White House Boys Organisation

Midnight Express

Gripping prison epic

Midnight Express is the true story of Billy Hayes, an American college student who was caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey in 1970 and thrown into prison. First released as a book in 1977, it quickly became a worldwide best-seller. The story was made into a movie in 1978, directed by Alan Parker, produced by David Puttnam and written by Oliver Stone. It went on to win two Oscars in 1979 for Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

In more recent times, Billy has travelled round the world with a one man show Riding the Midnight Express, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. He has written two sequels to his original book both published in 2013: Midnight Return (Escaping Midnight Express) and The Midnight Express Letters – from a Turkish Prison, 1970 – 1975, a collection of letters written to his friends and family from prison. In the same year, the story was made in to a ballet, which was the subject of much speculation when the lead dancer, Sergei Polunin, left the show one week before opening. In 2016, the story was the subject of a documentary, Midnight Return: The Story of Billy Hayes and Turkey.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

American Dirt

Incredible or insulting

When American Dirt came out, it was an Oprah’s book club pick and became The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. It was optioned for a film adaptation by Clint Eastwood and was lauded by many as the ‘great immigration novel’. However since then it has received harsh criticism, particularly from many Latinx writers for what they felt was its stereotypical portrait of migrants from Mexico and Central America. The controversy caused Jeanine Cummins to cancel her book tour and all events due to death threats and more.

There’s so much to discuss about this novel, so in addition to reading the book why not enrich your book club meeting by exploring the US/Mexico crisis further with podcasts and videos from the frontlines and discussions about the potential consequences of telling a story that is not your own.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

Educated

Astonishing self-invention

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days in rural Idaho with radical survivalist Mormon parents. She didn’t get a birth certificate until she was nine and had no medical records because her father did not believe in doctors. She and her six older siblings worked in her father’s junkyard. As she grew older, her father’s beliefs became more extreme and one of her brothers grew violent.

At 17, she decided to educate herself as a means of escape. Within 10 years she had earned a PhD in intellectual history and political thought from Cambridge but was estranged from her parents and half of her siblings. Now 31 and still living in Cambridge, Educated is her first novel and is about the transformative power of education and the price she had to pay for it.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

START HERE

(6 mins)

PODCASTS

(20 mins )

Kindle Paperwhite

(35 mins)

VIDEOS

(6 mins)

(3 mins )

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ARTICLES

XTRA

Colson Whitehead’s Website

The White House Boys Organisation

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