Here are the Winners of the 2021 National Book Awards - Oprah Mag
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Step aside, Oscar!
This year’s literary prize season kicked off with the National Book Awards on November 17, a virtual event hosted by Phoebe Robinson, bestselling author and one-half of the genius comedy team “2 Dope Queens,” and announced by Dion Graham, voice artist and audio-books eminence. Viewers toasted the festivities, streamed liv, posting images of sauvignon blanc and bubbly champagne on Twitter and Instagram. Despite the social distancing, the evening unfolded amid jubilant announcements and a camaraderie shared by book nerds hither and yon. Nancy Pearl, librarian par excellence, nabbed the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, while Karen Tei Yamashita was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
And then it was on to the five major categories. The laureates span an impressive range of language, research, and storytelling, much of it steeped in our quest for social justice. From the queer underworld of San Francisco in the mid-1950s to the border crisis rendered in poems to a Black author’s creepy promotional tour, these books are an embarrassment of riches, potent work from a dazzling array of writers.
1Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
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FICTION
Mott’s fourth novel is an ingenious romp through the foibles and fantasies of a bestselling Black author. His protagonist must contend with his own insecurities while facing down the plight of his own fictive character, Soot, and a phantom, The Kid, who haunts him on his book tour. Mott’s inventive parable is its own series of Russian nesting dolls, each with a fierce perspective on what it means to be Black in America.
2All The She Carried by Tiya Miles
NONFICTION
Black women and their families have been omitted from the official histories of our country and its archives by many historians. Harvard professor Tiya Miles does wonders in filling those gaps with this sparkling tale of an embroidered bag from 1921. On its surface, Ashley’s sack is an intimate family heirloom. In Miles’s artful hands, though, the object is transformed—an embodied memoir of Black women traveling from slavery to freedom, South to North, carrying relics and hopes as they seek new lives.
3Floaters by Martín Espada
POETRY
Espada’s sensual, textured work contains multitudes: from prose poems to aubade, he varies his forms brilliantly. (The title refers to a term border agents use to describe illegal immigrants who drown while crossing our borders.) He teases out disillusionment as well as whimsy, such as the “Love Song of the Galápagos Tortoise,” narrated by the ancient Lonesome George. Espada grapples with the rage at the heart of the American Dream while affirming our bonds of affection: “I will be there for you when they swarm you./I will arm myself against the hornets with natural/insecticides, the eucalyptus oils, the citronella.”
4Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (Author), Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Translator)
TRANSLATED LITERATURE
The European footprint in east Asia runs deep in this beguiling, enigmatic novel that traces one French-Korean woman’s odyssey, from her tourist resort near the border between the two Koreas, and into forbidden terrain, political and emotional. A receptionist meets a French cartoonist when he books lodging; he persuades her to come with him on a journey that straddles all kinds of taboos. Spare, sensuous, and seductive.
5Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
Lo conjures the perils and pleasures of postwar America in this haunting tale of queer desire, set in a noirish San Francisco in 1954. Lily Hu, the nerdy, proper daughter of Chinese immigrants, gravitates to the Telegraph Club in search of an allusive male impersonator. She’s joined by her friend Kathleen, who kindles yearnings Lily is hesitant to express. Lo skillfully melds the appeal of pulp fiction with a deeper exploration of attraction, race, and family at the height of the Cold War.
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