Buried Histories, Segregated Bodies: Trauma, Memory and Violence in Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys

This thesis explores the body as a form of memory, considering both body and memory as critical instruments for constructing counter-narratives of violence and resistance. The analysis focuses on Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019), a novel inspired by the real history of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida. Set in the context of segregation in the United States, the novel exposes the systemic violence inflicted on Black boys and examines the ways in which official institutions attempt to bury, erase, or deny their experiences. This thesis argues that Whitehead’s novel can be read as a counter-archival narrative because it recovers a silenced history of racialized institutional abuse through bodies, testimony, memory, and narrative reconstruction. Elwood’s wounded and erased body, together with Turner’s surviving body and belated testimony, becomes central to the novel’s resistance against historical erasure. Through its representation of bodily trauma, institutional silence, and suppressed memory, The Nickel Boys transforms private suffering into collective memory and challenges the systems of oppression that sought to make these experiences invisible.