46- ] American Literature - Colson Whitehead

46- ] American Literature

Colson Whitehead 

Colson Whitehead, in full Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead, (born November 6, 1969, New York City, New York, U.S.), American author known for innovative novels that explore social themes, including racism, while often incorporating fantastical elements. He was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for consecutive books: the historical novels The Underground Railroad (2016) and The Nickel Boys (2019). He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020 for The Nickel Boys. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Whitehead grew up in Manhattan, and he enjoyed reading, especially comics and science fiction, from an early age. In 1991 he graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in English and comparative literature. He then began writing movie, book, and television criticism for the weekly news and culture paper The Village Voice. He left that job in the late 1990s to Whitehead blended suspense and fantasy in his first novel, The Intuitionist (1999). The story centres on Lila Mae Watson, a Black elevator inspector who does her job through intuition and psychic connection rather than scientific means. After being framed for an elevator mishap, she uses detective skills to unravel the conspiracy. In the book Whitehead explored issues revolving around race, gender, and social progress. The Intuitionist earned widespread acclaim, and it was followed two years later by John Henry Days (2001). The novel centres on a Black freelance journalist named J who travels from New York City to West Virginia for a festival dedicated to John Henry, a character from African American folklore. According to legend, John Henry was a Black railroad-construction worker who bet that he could drive a steel spike into solid rock as fast as a newly invented steel-driving machine. Although he won the race and the wager, he died from the exertion. In the book J compares John Henry’s struggle against the machine to his own desire to break the record for most consecutive days attending publicity events. Whitehead next published Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) and Sag Harbor (2009). In Zone One (2011) he described a post-apocalyptic America in which people try to survive after a virus has turned some humans into zombies.

concentrate on writing novels.

Whitehead received greater attention and critical acclaim in 2016 with the release of The Underground Railroad. In the novel, a slave catcher relentlessly pursues an enslaved girl who has escaped along actual underground railroad tracks—a reimagined Underground Railroad. Besides winning the Pulitzer Prize, Whitehead received the National Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize. His success continued with The Nickel Boys (2019). Based on real events, the book is set in 1960s Florida, which was then under Jim Crow laws that discriminated against African Americans. The story follows two Black teenagers who are sent to a juvenile reform school where they are physically and emotionally abused by administrators and teachers. The acclaimed work won several awards, most notably a Pulitzer. In 2021 Whitehead published Harlem Shuffle, a crime novel that opens in 1959 and centres on a furniture salesman who becomes involved in a scheme to rob a hotel.

Whitehead also wrote nonfiction, notably The Colossus of New York (2003), a collection of essays about New York City, and The Noble Hustle (2014), about the 2011 World Series of Poker.

During his career Whitehead taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States. He participated in speaking engagements. Among his other honours, Whitehead was the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim fellowship (2013).

Career

After graduating from college, Whitehead wrote for The Village Voice. While working at the Voice, he began drafting his first novels.

Whitehead has since produced ten book-length works—eight novels and two non-fiction works, including a meditation on life in Manhattan in the style of E.B. White's famous essay Here Is New York. His books are 1999's The Intuitionist; 2001's John Henry Days; 2003's The Colossus of New York; 2006's Apex Hides the Hurt; 2009's Sag Harbor; 2011's Zone One, a New York Times bestseller; 2016's The Underground Railroad, which earned a National Book Award for Fiction; 2019's The Nickel Boys; and 2021's Harlem Shuffle. Esquire magazine named The Intuitionist the best first novel of the year, and GQ called it one of the "novels of the millennium". Novelist John Updike, reviewing The Intuitionist in The New Yorker, called Whitehead "ambitious", "scintillating", and "strikingly original", adding, "The young African-American writer to watch may well be a thirty-one-year-old Harvard graduate with the vivid name of Colson Whitehead."

Whitehead's The Intuitionist was nominated as the Common Novel at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Common Novel nomination was part of a long-time tradition at the Institute that included authors like Maya Angelou, Andre Dubus III, William Joseph Kennedy, and Anthony Swofford.

Whitehead's non-fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, and Harper's.

His non-fiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death, was published by Doubleday in 2014.

Whitehead has taught at Princeton University, New York University, the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Wesleyan University. He has been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.

In the spring of 2015, he joined The New York Times Magazine to write a column on language.

His 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, was a selection of Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and was chosen by President Barack Obama as one of five books on his summer vacation reading list. In January 2017 it was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction at the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference in Atlanta, GA. Colson was honored with the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The Underground Railroad won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America".

Whitehead's seventh novel, The Nickel Boys, was published in July 2019. The novel was inspired by the real-life story of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where children convicted of minor offences suffered violent abuse. In conjunction with the publication of The Nickel Boys, Whitehead was featured on the cover of Time magazine for the July 8, 2019, edition, alongside the strap-line "America's Storyteller". The Nickel Boys won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Judges of the prize called the novel "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption". It was Whitehead's second win, making him the fourth writer in history to have won the prize twice. In 2022, it was announced that Whitehead will executive produce the upcoming film adaptation of the same name.

 Whitehead's eighth novel, Harlem Shuffle, was conceived and begun before he wrote The Nickel Boys. It is a work of crime fiction set in Harlem during the 1960s. Whitehead spent years writing the novel, and ultimately finished it in "bite-sized chunks" during the months he spent in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Harlem Shuffle was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021.

Works

Fiction

The Intuitionist (1999), John Henry Days (2001), Apex Hides the Hurt (2006),

Sag Harbor (2009), Zone One (2011), The Underground Railroad (2016), The Nickel Boys (2019), Harlem Shuffle (2021), Crook Manifesto (2023)

Non-fiction

The Colossus of New York (2003), The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky & Death (2014)

Essays

"Lost and Found". The New York Times Magazine. November 11, 2001.

"A Psychotronic Childhood". The New Yorker. June 4, 2012.

"Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley". Grantland. ESPN. August 24, 2012.

"Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia". Grantland. ESPN. May 19, 2013.

Short stories

"Down in Front". Granta (86: Film). Summer 2004. (subscription required)

"The Gangsters". The New Yorker. December 22, 2008.

"The Match". The New Yorker. April 1, 2019.

"The Theresa Job". The New Yorker. July 26, 2021.