Colson Whitehead on Art, Violence, and Villainy
Going deep (and laughing darkly) with the author of The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead’s celebrated new novel, The Nickel Boys, is the spare, serious work of a mature literary artist living in dark times. It’s the story of two boys, Elwood and Turner, at a reform school called the Nickel Academy, a fictionalized version of the real-life Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, where for more than a hundred years students were abused, raped, beaten — and scores of them murdered, their broken bodies hidden on the grounds. In 2013, the remains of 55 boys were discovered, and survivors are convinced that many more will be found. Jerry Cooper, the president of a support group of former students, told NPR’s Greg Allen in April, “We have, on a list, a total of 183 boys that cannot be accounted for, sir.”
In 2016, shortly after Donald Trump’s election, Whitehead won the National Book Award for his sixth novel, The Underground Railroad; it’s one of only a handful of books ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in the same year. His acceptance speech in New York concluded, “We’re happy in here; outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland of Trumpland. Be kind to everybody, make art and fight the power.”
