Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead in 2014

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist.

Quotes

• I ask myself: Is the outlook of this book comic? Is it tragic? Is the story best served by a first person narrator who's telling his or her story? Is it best served by an omniscient narrator who can stand above and make connections about the characters and society and politics? Part of figuring out how to tell the story is tone and voice, the same way I'm picking characters and places.
  • On choosing the tone of his works in “INTERVIEWS—Powell's Interview: Colson Whitehead, Author of 'The Nickel Boys'” in Powell’s City of Books (2019 Jul 11)

• My compulsion to write the story was from seeing so many people go unpunished, and so many innocents' stories being untold…
  • On his moral imperative to write his work The Nickel Boys in “INTERVIEWS—Powell's Interview: Colson Whitehead, Author of 'The Nickel Boys'” in Powell’s City of Books (2019 Jul 11)

• Elwood and Turner represent two different parts of my personality…There is the optimistic or hopeful part of me [in Elwood] that believes we can make the world a better place if we keep working at it. Then there’s the pessimistic side, the cynical side [in Turner] that says no—this country is founded on genocide, murder, and slavery and it will always be that way. That’s our dilemma as human beings: How do we reconcile the hopeful with our pessimistic side? How do we reconcile disappointments with the small daily times that make up our lives? I don’t know [any more] than anybody else.… For the characters [in the novel] there’s the problem of, How do you come back from a life-changing catastrophe?...Bouncing back from trauma, you borrow from a sense of hope…but also recognize what you’ve gone through and what you’re up against.
  • On the characters in The Nickel Boys representing polar opposites of his personality in “’The Outrage Was So Large and So Secret’: Colson Whitehead Talks Hope, Despair, and Fighting the Power in The Nickel Boys” in Vanity Fair (2019 Jul 16)

• I never know when I start out. You know, I sort of know what the ending is. I know where the characters always end up, and I usually have an image of the last page before I start. I'm a big outliner. But you can't know everything and you have to be open to discovery…
  • On how envisioning an ending allows him to conclude each character’s journey in “Extended interview: Colson Whitehead on writing ‘The Nickel Boys’" in CBS News (2019 Jul 14)
    

• The way he saw it, living taught you that you didn’t have to live the way you’d been taught to live. You came from one place but more important was where you decided to go.
  • Harlem Shuffle (2021)