“The Cruelty of Nice Folks: Why Minneapolis Is the Story of America” by Justin Ellis c.2026, Harper $30.00 419 pages
Two blocks up, two down. Once upon a time, that was your entire world. You lived here, Grandma’s house was around the corner, uncles and aunties lived along the way, school was nearby, church across the street. That real estate held everything you needed. But what if things changed? What if, as in the new memoir, “The Cruelty of Nice Folks” by Justin Ellis, your hometown, the place that held your memories, betrayed you?
Chances are that when you think of Minnesota, you think of lakes, lush fields, or fun in the snow. Justin Ellis thought of home because he grew up in Minneapolis, close to family and friends and everything he held dear.
He was, therefore, understandably alarmed when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died. Ellis wondered how something like this could happen in the city he loved, and so he headed home.
Being a Black family in Minneapolis was never without its struggles. There, Ellis says, “only 26 percent of Black families own homes…” When unemployment for Black residents was at an all-time low, it was double what white Minneapolitans experienced.
And scattered throughout Ellis’s lifetime, Black citizen died at the hands of police.
He wanted to know why, with such a progressive reputation and a history of welcome for people of color, was there still racial violence in his hometown? Would Chauvin pay for Floyd’s murder?
Ellis says, “… our eyes had seen this death so many times before and watched a killer walk away. What were we supposed to believe?”
Arriving in Minneapolis, Ellis set out to see the whole picture that he and other Black Minneapolitans had lived, but his arrival there had dual purpose. Ellis’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and she needed him close.
As her life slipped away, he studied the death of a man he’d never know…
While you’ll probably pick up “The Cruelty of Nice Folks” for its thoughtful content and the fact-finding inside, it’s important to at least give a nod to the books’ exquisite writing. Author Justin Ellis sharpens a thought, turns a phrase, and screws it tightly into your heart in a way that most writers will only wish they could do, so pay attention and don’t miss it.
That’s the first appeal of this book.
The second appeal is in the story itself, and the reporting that Ellis offers. Readers who know all about “Minnesota Nice” but also about Floyd, Renee Good and Alex Pretti will see the yin and yang of the Twin Cities, and why Minneapolis’s long history of race relations explains a lot of what’s going on in the rest of America. That story is woven in with a memoir of a mother’s love that’ll make you want a big box of tissues. You’ve been warned.
This is a thoughtful, thorough book that will satisfy readers of history and biographies, making it a don’t-miss. Start “The Cruelty of Nice Folks” and you’ll find that you can’t put it down.
I did not change any words. I only removed the line breaks and retyped the text in paragraph form.
