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The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. This is the second Pulitzer win as the first one was for The Underground Railroad in 2017. The Underground Railroad has already been optioned and will be made into a TV series. The runner-up for this year's Pulitzer were The Topeka School by Ben Lerner and The Dutch House by Ann Padgett.
The Pulitzer's board members stated that The Nickel Boys was "ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption."
A Strange Loop, by Michael R. Jackson won the prize for Drama. The two other finalists were Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery and the musical Soft Power, by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori.
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel won the prize for History and Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser -- won the Pulitzer for biography.
Similar Topic: 2019 National Book Award:- The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (winner for Nonfiction)
Here is the goodreads synopsis of The Nickel Boys:
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of French town in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, 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, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."
In reality, The Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, 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 whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at The Nickel Academy.
Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children.
Source material: Vogue.com
The Pulitzer's board members stated that The Nickel Boys was "ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption."
A Strange Loop, by Michael R. Jackson won the prize for Drama. The two other finalists were Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery and the musical Soft Power, by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori.
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, by W. Caleb McDaniel won the prize for History and Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser -- won the Pulitzer for biography.
Similar Topic: 2019 National Book Award:- The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (winner for Nonfiction)
Here is the goodreads synopsis of The Nickel Boys:
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of French town in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, 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, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."
In reality, The Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, 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 whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at The Nickel Academy.
Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children.
Source material: Vogue.com
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