We will be discussing "The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead. Copies of this month's book can be picked up from the West Indianapolis Branch. Adults are invited to this free monthly book discussion program. We meet on the second Monday of the month.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is available as a print book, an eBook, a downloadable audiobook, an audiobook CD, a preloaded audiobook, in Large Print, and a book club kit in the Library's collection.
"As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone"... Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called The Nickel Academy... [It] is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked and the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades."
The first West Indianapolis Branch opened in 1897, following the annexation of West Indianapolis into the city of Indianapolis. A new building on West Morris Street, constructed with funds from a $120,000 grant by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, opened in 1912 and served the community until 1986, when the current 5,000-square-foot branch began service on South Kappes Street.
