SURVIVING RACISM: A CRITICAL STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT IN COLSON WHITEHEAD’S THE NICKEL BOYS

Abstract

Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys offers a vital investigation into the enduring psychological consequences of institutionalized racism and the enduring effects of systemic oppression. Historically, the novel is a postcolonial text that highlights the continuous oppression of Black bodies and attempts to erase their identities. Elwood and Turner exemplify forms of the colonized subject who exist within a racist white world. The aim of this article is to analyze how institutional racism repeats the colonizing trajectory of violence, which depersonalizes individuals while amplifying their psychological trauma. From a postcolonial approach, it examines questions of surviving, resisting, and re-asserting an identification of self in an ongoing face off to racism and the trauma of colonization.