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A review by cheesy_hobbit
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
5.0
A fictional but powerful story about the horrors of reform schools for boys in the 19th and 20th centuries. These schools often functioned as an institutional arm of oppression of minorities and "lower" classes, subjecting young people to abuse, forced labor, and in many cases, death.
Due's note at the end of her novel (see 2nd image) is heartbreaking. Colson Whitehead also wrote a fictional account of The Doizer School for Boys, "The Nickel Boys", and if you're looking for a factual account of the atrocities, then "We Carry Their Bones" by Erin Kimmerle is an important book to turn to.
Due's novel, for me, was reminiscent of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing", which both deal with the legacies of racism and white supremacy in America. Morrison's novel is a fictional account of a family of former slaves who live in a house in post-Civil War Cincinnati and are haunted by a malevolent spirit, known as Beloved.
Ward's novel takes us to contemporary Mississippi, where a dysfunctional African-American family struggling with generational trauma, drug abuse, and the impacts of a unforgiving penal system dependent on free labor, travel to Parchmann Farm, the state penitentiary, to pickup the white father of the family after his release from prison. Following in the footstep's of Morrison, Ward seamlessly and powerfully intermingles the struggles of existing under racial power structures with a spiritual undercurrent, leaning into magical realism in a broader and more intentional way than Morrison.
The Reformatory picks up where both authors left off, backtracking along the timeline to the early to mid 20th century, but leaning heavily on "haints", or haunts/ghosts that exist as manifestations of the horrors that were inflicted upon the boys of The Reformatory, and just how far institutions of "justice" will go to protect white power and subjugation of those they deem inferior.
I can easily envision a semester course built around Morrison, Ward, and Due's novels, and mixed with nonfiction works such as the aforementioned Kimmerle book, or Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste" or "The Warmth of Other Suns", and exploring how the fictional authors have to rely on magical realism and the spirit realm to act as protectors and saviors of their humanity because real-world institutions and classes continue to actively deprive them of the protection they are 400 years overdue.
Due's note at the end of her novel (see 2nd image) is heartbreaking. Colson Whitehead also wrote a fictional account of The Doizer School for Boys, "The Nickel Boys", and if you're looking for a factual account of the atrocities, then "We Carry Their Bones" by Erin Kimmerle is an important book to turn to.
Due's novel, for me, was reminiscent of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing", which both deal with the legacies of racism and white supremacy in America. Morrison's novel is a fictional account of a family of former slaves who live in a house in post-Civil War Cincinnati and are haunted by a malevolent spirit, known as Beloved.
Ward's novel takes us to contemporary Mississippi, where a dysfunctional African-American family struggling with generational trauma, drug abuse, and the impacts of a unforgiving penal system dependent on free labor, travel to Parchmann Farm, the state penitentiary, to pickup the white father of the family after his release from prison. Following in the footstep's of Morrison, Ward seamlessly and powerfully intermingles the struggles of existing under racial power structures with a spiritual undercurrent, leaning into magical realism in a broader and more intentional way than Morrison.
The Reformatory picks up where both authors left off, backtracking along the timeline to the early to mid 20th century, but leaning heavily on "haints", or haunts/ghosts that exist as manifestations of the horrors that were inflicted upon the boys of The Reformatory, and just how far institutions of "justice" will go to protect white power and subjugation of those they deem inferior.
I can easily envision a semester course built around Morrison, Ward, and Due's novels, and mixed with nonfiction works such as the aforementioned Kimmerle book, or Isabel Wilkerson's "Caste" or "The Warmth of Other Suns", and exploring how the fictional authors have to rely on magical realism and the spirit realm to act as protectors and saviors of their humanity because real-world institutions and classes continue to actively deprive them of the protection they are 400 years overdue.