How Nickel Boys Tackles Black Trauma And First Perspectives

As synchronicity would have it, when an advance reader’s copy of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel, The Nickel Boys, landed in RaMell Ross’s hands, he would be deep at work on an exhibition in New Orleans, already contemplating both knotty and tempestuous history of American South and its mark specifically on the Black soul.

“I was, at the time, in the process of executing a project for the Ogden Museum called ‘Return to Origin’ in which I shipped myself from Rhode Island to Alabama, in a crate,” Ross explains. As a visual artist, writer and filmmaker, this is familiar territory for rumination: “I was working with the concept of reverse Black migration and return. As you know, the South is as important as any place for people of color or Black folks, at least. I shipped myself there on a gooseneck trailer. And so, kind of already in this mindset of thinking; it’s a return to the birthplace of the concept of Black identity.”

Whitehead’s riveting, tour de force of a novel, (which would go on to capture the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2020), had roots sunk deep into that same marshy territory. Redolent, gripping, and shape shifting on the page, the book stares squarely into the ugly legacy Jim Crow segregation’s violent practices and their lingering effects. Remarkably, Ross made note, the novel also meaningfully celebrated humanity’s tools for survival, the resolute powers of the life force. Like the historical frameworks that Ross was exploring in his installation, The Nickel Boys confronted an era that didn’t quite yet feel like history, rather the novel made the struggles and brutality we presently navigate feel that much more urgent, perilous. The book, which followed Whitehead’s highly regarded The Underground Railroad, shadows the harrowing story of two Black boys — Elwood and Turner— negotiating their hard-time served in a severe reform school, while attempting to claim, protect and nurture their own humanity.

Based on the real story of the infamous Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, a reformatory that operated for 111 years and made headlines in the early 2000s, as a notoriously savage institution. Hundreds of men came forward to tell decades-old stories about abuse —physical and emotional—that they had endured during their time served at the state-run institution, just west of Tallahassee. While the institution closed in 2011, an on-going investigation determined that more than 100 boys had died on the grounds, nearly half of them buried in unmarked graves.

As Ross moved through the novel, absorbing its layers and heart-stopping twists he could trace a sure line between it and his own practice—most particularly his 2018 documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening. “You know all of my work — my photography and writing, it’s all sort of centered on the Black experience, the aesthetic of what all of that means — which is really complex.” Through those lenses, it’s subject matter that he sees as ever evolving and quietly shifting, and his work mimics capturing light in a bottle — in its glimmers, glances and breaths. Whitehead’s text found a familiar place inside him. “Reading this story there is so much poetry, in the quotidian—the epic banal, as I call it.”

Ross, who was born in Frankfurt, Germany and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, (and now splits his time between Rhode Island and Alabama) keyed into Whitehead’s storytelling: its spare and specific language; its emotional landscapes; its rhythms, which felt familiar to his ear. “It was such an open-ended visual world,” he says, “I mean, it is such a minimalist novel. It seemed like he laid the stage for a sort of interstitial poetry of what it would be like to be Elwood to explore and grow up. It was such an open-ended visual world.” While he was aware of Whitehead and his previous work, this specific text would be a high-dive into something he thought—as an artist who works intimately with dreamscapes-like images—that he could, perhaps, find a place inside.

They examined the questions before them: “How do you acknowledge the pain that’s real, but at the same time, how do you frame things in a different way?” reflects Barnes, “In this way, I thought about [the artist] Kara Walker and how she deals with history inside of history, inside of real time.” This was the breakthrough: “You have to change where you’re looking,” Barnes clarifies. “One of RaMell’s greatest gifts is ‘how to look.’ So, point of view became central to how we wanted to address the film. RaMell has a real interest in those interstitial moments, and how you can actually open up the spectrum of possibilities.”

Brainstorming with Barnes, a more specific vision began to germinate: “I want to do POV, I want to do this, and I want to do that.’ Our conversation was so fruitful.” Barnes’ was a trusted confidant and creative partner. She’d gone to bat for him: “There was no one in the world who wanted to make Hale County because it was such an abstract, impressionistic look inside the lives of people of color. No one wanted to take that film on, aside from Joslyn’s company.” She understood it and knew precisely how to support his vision. And it was that outside-the-box vision that captured Gardner and Kleiner’s attention. As his and Barnes’ ideas threaded together, a plan for Nickel Boys clarified: “I asked Joslyn if she would like to co-write with me,” says Ross, “Dede and Jeremy were like: “Do whatever you want for the treatment. We like that. Do whatever you want for the script.’”

From the outset, after closing the book, Gardner and Kleiner knew, unequivocally that they needed someone who could meet and translate Whitehead’s text on the levels of craft, ingenuity and vision. “I mean, the jujitsu move of the book, I think, was really flooring. Stunning,” says Dede Garner. “We were thinking, ‘How do we select the person who can preserve this acrobatic gesture?’ And we’d seen Hale County, and I do remember saying to Jeremy, “Let’s give it to RaMell.”

RaMell Ross, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Daveed Diggs, Fred Hechinger, and Hamish Linklater spoke about the creation and transformation of Nickel Boys. Check out the full interview in the video above.