Colson Whitehead has won
the National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Underground Railroad. A
New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club pick, the book chronicles the
daring survival story of a young plantation slave in Georgia who makes a desperate bid for freedom as she races through the
Underground Railroad with a relentless slave-catcher close behind.
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibrim X.
Kendi won the nonfiction award. A
comprehensive history of anti-black racism, this book focuses on the lives of five major
players in American history, including Cotton Mather and Thomas Jefferson, and
highlights the debates that took place between assimilationists and
segregationists and between racists and antiracists.
The award for poetry went to Daniel Borzutzky for The Performance of Becoming Human.
Borzutzky's work draws connections between the U.S. and Latin America,
specifically touching upon issues relating to border and immigration policies,
economic disparity, political violence, and the disturbing rhetoric of
capitalism and bureaucracies.
The award for Young People’s Literature went to Congressman
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell for the graphic memoir March: Book Three.
March: Book Three is the final book in Lewis's graphic memoir trilogy. The trilogy gives a first-hand account of the author's lifelong
struggle for civil and human rights. It begins with Lewis's life as a child in rural Alabama and continues to his involvement in the
Freedom Vote and Mississippi Freedom Summer campaigns, and the Selma to
Montgomery march. While March: Book Three won the Award for Young People's Literature, the whole trilogy will be of interest to a broad audience, including adults.
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