【英語で読書感想文】The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead コルソン・ホワイトヘッド『ニッケル・ボーイズ』

Title: The Nickel Boys
Author: Colson Whitehead

“The Nickel Boys” is inspired by a shocking true story of a juvenile reform institution called the Dozier School for Boys in Florida. This book is short but powerful. Another great read this year!

Synopsis: In the 1960s, Elwood Curtis, an African American boy, got arrested on a false charge and sent to a reform school called the Nickel Academy where boys were segregated by race. The protagonist, who was enthusiastic about education and the Civil Rights Movement by Martin Luther King Jr., found that African American boys got treated poorly and abused by the superintendent and other staff. The story was also set in the 2010s where Elwood was all grown up and was running a business in New York. He recollected the experiences at the Academy and slowly revealed to us what really happened there.

I’ve heard that the author Colson Whitehead did a lot of research to write this book. Obviously the topic in it is very heavy and almost depressing because we all know this kind of injustice and inequality is still alive in the real world. But I think the author takes care to inform and engage readers. The alternating narrative style is interesting. While reading it, I thought about his novel “The Underground Railroad”, which is a fiction with fantasy elements based on the history of U.S. slavery. Both books include such a sensitive theme and made me extremely sad and mad because of what so many people had to go through. But they also fascinated me at the same time because of the author’s beautiful writing and the story structure. In addition, a plot twist at the ending part just stunned me (the idea itself is not new nor super creative but I just didn’t expect the story to go this way at all) I want to call this mixed feeling “a joy of reading”.

Some readers may point out that it’s better to read a non-fiction book about the Dozier School than to read the fictional story and I agree with that sentiment. I actually looked up the incidents on the Internet after reading this book. Still, I want to admire that the author chose to write the story in this way. I believe some great fictions play a role to keep real events in our mind and deepen our thoughts. The Nickel Boys is undoubtedly one of these.

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この小説読んだ後、史実のほうも調べた。
時々「小説や映画より実際の史実を読めばいいのでは」みたいなこと言う人を見かけるけど、そのことについてもいつか書きたいなと思っています。

元の投稿はコチラ↓です。

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