Excellent short fiction from Colson Whitehead in current New Yorker

Colson Whitehead's story, The Match, in current NYer is another fine piece from this always-worth-reading author who continues to surprise w/ the variety and range of his work and with his paritcular focus on issues of race and class across the history of the U.S. This piece, evidently a section from his forthcoming novel, is set at a so-called "reform school" in rural Florida in what seems to be the 50s or early 60s. The "school" for wayward and often orphaned or abandoned boys is rigidly divided by race - one dorm for white boys, another for "colored." All of the boys are brutally abused, mistreated, and exploited, physically and sexually. They live in constant fear, and are prepared for nothing beyond their stay in the school, Nickel Academy (named after the brutal and hypocritical founder). This particular piece of fiction involves a planned - and rigged - prize fight between the top black child, a bully who is feared by all, and the top white child, an event much anticipated and attended by a large contingent of (white) men from the area who bet heavily on the (rigged) outcome. The story will remind readers of the famous Battle Royale episode in Ellison's Invisible Man and of course of Sillitoe's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - both of which involve grown (so-called) men getting their kicks through the torment and trial of young male athletes in their control. This story - although challenging to follow at some points because so many characters are quickly introduced - is graphic and dynamic, building to point of conflict and to a surprising, dramatic, and sorrowful conclusion. White head is a writer w/ vast imagination and skill at historical research; I don't know how much of this story is based on the records of an actual institution - perhaps none of it - but it feels vivid and contemporary, especially as we think of the many holding pens even today on the southern border and the brutality (and racism) that is no doubt still practiced and tolerated in so many prison settings.