Four authors have been named winners at the 89th Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, joining the ranks of Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s the only juried prize for works which confront racism and celebrate diversity.
“The through line is very clear, because it's about representation: Trying to bring a reader into an understanding of someone's culture,” said Nicholas Roman Lewis, director of the Cleveland-based award.
Monica Youn’s “From From” won the poetry prize. It’s described by jurors as “a brilliant collection of poems lush with detail in its meditations on myth, history, popular culture and art.”
“She's looking at Asian identity,” Lewis said. “She's even questioning in her poetry her own relationship to what she's been told about her identity. And she does it so wonderfully, playing with structure and form.”
Questioning identity is also touched on by the nonfiction winner, Ned Blackhawk. His book, “The Rediscovery of America,” also won a 2023 National Book Award. A member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada, he’s a professor of history and American studies at Yale University.
“It is taking you to a foundational moment - actually, before our country started,” Lewis said. “It makes you start to question, rightfully so, history that you've been told.”
Lewis said all of the 2024 winners are writing from a place of their own experiences, and readers can relate to those experiences. He cited the example of the names used by Nigerian-American author Teju Cole in this year’s fiction winner, “Tremor.”
“If you... have not had experience, those names don't fall off your tongue,” Lewis said. “You should take the time to learn all of that. So, is he making a statement, or is this just his world?"
Lewis said he’s looking forward to panel discussions with the winners during this fall’s Cleveland Book Week, when Youn, Blackhawk and Cole will be honored along with lifetime achievement winner Maxine Hong Kingston. Lewis said her 1976 book, “The Woman Warrior,” has taken on a life beyond literature.
“It had a cultural moment,” he said. “People were able to use this book to change... how you perceive people.”
In his opinion, that exemplifies why Edith Anisfield Wolf created the award in 1935: To see change in the world to make it a better place. This year’s awards were announced Tuesday at the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Parma-Snow branch by Percival Everett, a 2022 winner for “The Trees.”
