Colson whitehead biography of michaels
Colson Whitehead fictionalises real-life reform school in follow up to The Underground Railroad
The summer of is not one author Colson Whitehead could easily forget: "It was the summer of a lot of racial unrest in America," he says.
In July, in New York City, the African-American man Eric Garner was put in to a chokehold by white police officers attempting to arrest him. He died shortly afterwards. In August, the African-American teenager Michael Brown Jr was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
WARNING: This story includes content that some readers might find distressing.
"It just seemed that no-one was ever held accountable," Whitehead says.
"People who perpetrate crimes get away with it and the innocent suffer."
And then in August, the writer read — with thousands of other Americans — about the bodies being unearthed in Marianna, Florida.
At the site of the former Arthur G. Dozier Reform School for Boys, archaeology students were examining the remains of dozens of boys — many of whom had been buried in unmarked graves — who had died at the notorious school during its years of operation.
Many of the deaths had never been documented. Forensic examinations found the dead boys had suffered head trauma, malnutrition and infection. Some had shotgun pellets in their rib cages.
As the bodies were examined, adult survivors of Dozier came forward to share horrific stories of their time at the reform school. They spoke of violent whippings, sexual abuse and boys going missing. One survivor told the media about being ordered to dig a grave during the night.
The stories shocked the local community and sparked a police investigation.
They also inspired Whitehead, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Underground Railroad, to write his new book, The Nickel Boys.
"It [Dozier] seemed horrible in its details, it seemed horrible that I had never heard of the place. And if there's one pl US author Colson Whitehead has become only the fourth writer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice. The African-American author was honoured for The Nickel Boys, which chronicles the abuse of black boys at a juvenile reform school in Florida. Whitehead, a year-old New Yorker, won the prize in the same category for his book The Underground Railroad. Before him, only Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike had won the Pulitzer for fiction twice. The awards, postponed for several weeks due to the coronavirus, were announced remotely this year in the living room of Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy. She noted that the first Pulitzers were awarded in , less than a year before the outbreak of the Spanish Flu. They are among the highest honours for US-based journalists and authors. Whitehead has previously said he grew up wanting to be the black version of horror writer Stephen King. His Nickel Boys was inspired by the real-life horror story of the Dozier School for Boys in the Florida panhandle, where children convicted of minor offences were subjected to violent abuse. The Harvard graduate's novel was praised by the Pulitzer committee for its "spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption". The New York Times newspaper topped the list of publications for journalism honours with three awards, including the prestigious investigative reporting prize for Brian Rosenthal's expose of New York City's taxi industry, showing how predatory lenders exploited vulnerable drivers. privacy policy In collaboration Colson Whitehead is no stranger to addressing the sins of the past with his pen and his imagination. He did it most famously with The Underground Railroad, where he tackled slavery with an element of magical realism that saw the Underground Railroad that helped so many enslaved people escape as something more than metaphor. He framed it as a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil operated by engineers and conductors, and it resonated so that a slew of awards followed. With his latest work, Whitehead gives a fictional take on the real-life horrors that happened at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida for more than years, through the eyes of a young black boy who suffered terrible, life-altering abuse there. Listen in as he talks with editor Laura Michaels about why he was compelled to tell this story, how he approached the research, and what's his involvement with The Underground Railroad Amazon series. Note: Text has been edited and may not match audio exactly. Laura Michaels: Hi, everyone. I'm Audible editor Laura, and I'm here with Colson Whitehead. He's the author of nine books, including TheUnderground Railroad, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Now, he's back with Nickel Boys, a heartbreaking story, which takes place in Florida during the Jim Crow Era. We meet Elwood Curtis, who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys. There, he befriends Turner, and the story unfolds further about their time at the school and the atrocities they endured. It's a book that I haven't been able to stop talking about. So I'm excited to speak with Colson today. Hello! Colson Whitehead: How do you do? LM: I'm pretty good. As we were talking about before, it feels very weird to be so excited about this book because it is so heartbreaking and so emotionally jarring that it fe Whitehead, Colson Anchor Books, Price: $ Add to CartAsk a QuestionAdd to Wish ListColson Whitehead: Author wins Pulitzer Prize for a second time
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The Nickel Boys
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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Time, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vox, Variety, Christian Science Monitor, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, TheDallas Morning News, Literary Hub, BuzzFeed, The New York Public LibraryNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADEWINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner's conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.