Pulitzer Prize Winner Colson Whitehead's Heartless Killers and Zombies

During research into Ann Patchett for my Dutch House Blog, I learned that The Dutch House was a Pulitzer finalist in 2020. Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys won for fiction. Based on the infamous Dozier School for Boys in Florida where a forensic archeologist from the University of South Florida and her team investigated school records and a cemetery with fewer headstones than bodies in graves, Whitehead’s Pulitzer winner is a page turner. National Public Radio aired a story about Whitehead’s historical fiction piece citing USF’s involvement, and I was intrigued, if not horrified, to learn of abuse and murder of one hundred children between the ages of six and 18. Whitehead’s description of savage teachers as punishers is sad, sad, sad. At just 224 pages, this short gem is also a mystery that will leave you jaw-dropped and re-reading the last couple of pages in disbelief. And dare I say, I enjoyed The Nickel Boys more than I enjoyed Whitehead’s other Pulitzer (yes, he won twice) winner: The Underground Railroad? The New Yorker features a Nickel Boys' sample chapter. A real treat as Whitehead narrates here.

But my favorite novel—so far—of Whitehead’s is Zone One because it satisfies the zombie lover in me. (I’m third in line on my Libby app to read his newest Harlem Shuffle). Zombie apocalypse literature, including film and television, isn’t about zombies. Ostensibly, yes, humans turn into flesh-eating hordes for no apparent reason, while survivors board up shelters and scrounge for food, but that trope wears thin. Deeper zombie literature (stop laughing!) is an allegory for society’s ills and humankind’s foibles. And Whitehead’s Zone One delivers on both those accounts. In an interview with The Guardian when One showed up on the New York Times’ list of pandemic novels for Covid quarantine, Whitehead said: “Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.” He’s right, of course, and Zone One was my introduction to Whitehead’s writing back in 2011. Re-reading the apocalyptic novel today encourages a meaning of isolation and loss of loved ones I hadn’t felt during the first go around. And protagonist Mark Spitz (no, not THAT Spitz from Olympic fame) reminded me to be kind, helpful, compassionate, and human to my fellow humans.

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) by Colson Whitehead

ISBN: 9780385537070

Publication Date: 2019-07-16

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In this Pulitzer Prize-winning follow-up to The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.   When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s 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 111 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 and "should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly). Look for Colson Whitehead's bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

ISBN: 9780385528078

Publication Date: 2011-10-18

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street--aka Zone One--but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety--the "malfunctioning" stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz's desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world. And then things start to go wrong. Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre's conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.