Title: Afrofuturist Hero-Writing in Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys

Abstract: Afrofuturist conceptions of heroism depart from traditional heroic paradigms centered on world-saving missions and self-sacrifice, instead foregrounding how Black subjects persist and survive under conditions of structural racial oppression. In The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead articulates this survival-oriented model of heroism by juxtaposing the life trajectories of two Black adolescents, Elwood and Turner. Elwood remains committed to moral idealism and nonviolent resistance, yet ultimately meets his death at the hands of institutionalized violence. Turner, by contrast, survives through silence, endurance, and strategic withdrawal. The stark contrast between their fates calls into question the limits of sacrificial heroism and forcefully affirms a central principle of Afrofuturist heroism: in a world fundamentally hostile to Black life, the act of surviving itself constitutes a form of heroism.

Keywords: Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Afrofuturism, hero-writing

Author: Tongxin Cheng, Ph.D. Candidate, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2025.04.011