Celebrating Award Winning Authors for the Reading Writers of Color Challenge

Posted on by lonelycryptidmedia

This post is part of the Reading Writers of Color 2021 challenge hosted by Lonely Cryptid Media’s staff writer and editor, Dan Michael Fielding.

In 2019 it had been five years since a woman had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Pulitzer’s statistics have been getting worse over the previous few decades, going from near gender-parity at its inception to awarding just two women in the 2010s. The Nobel Prize didn’t fare much better. From 114 recipients, it awarded just 14 women the Nobel Prize in Literature. There have only been three black Nobel laureates in Literature: Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, and Wole Soyinka.

An image of a stack of books. The text reads, "Reading Writers of Color 2021. Read a book by an award winning writer of color. #ReadPOC2021."

The Pulitzer Prize appears to be adjusting course. In 2020 the gave several awards for books, drama, and music related to racial justice (although some of these awards are given to white men writing about blackness). Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2021, an awesome achievement that speaks to her prolific and spectacular writing. I’ve mentioned my appreciation for Louise Erdrich before (twice, actually), and I was pleased to see that even an award with a known gender and race problem was able to recognize her.

The problems perpetuated by big-name, prestigious awards are well-documented. For example, it took 83 years for the United Kingdom’s most prestigious children’s book award, the Carnegie medal, to recognize an author of color. Dominican-American poet Elizabeth Acevedo was the first non-white author to be recognized, apparently the result of the prize instigating a review of its policies after receiving backlash for its 2017 list of 20 white authors.

Just to emphasized the point: It took 83 years to award one author of color the Carnegie medal. Wow.

The cover of The Night Watchman shows the title and alternating bands of green, purple,white, and blue lines. The cover also reads "New York Times Bestseller."
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2021.

The award-winner you choose to read for this month doesn’t have to be from a “big name” or “prestigious” award. This would be a great time to look through award winners local to your area, or award winners in genres you enjoy reading.

For example, as a science fiction fan I might study the list of Otherwise Award (formerly the James Tiptree Jr. award) winners. This award is given to speculative fiction that explores gender, but also emphasizes “works that have a broad, intersectional, trans-inclusive understanding of gender in the context of race, class, nationality, disability, and more.” An award that specifically names intersectionality and recognizes that gender is not a static concept is one I’m more interested in supporting than a more popularly-known award. Plus, I get to read cool science fiction. It’s a win-win!

What genres are you interested in? What awards are there for the genres you read?

This might also be a good time to look ahead to November’s prompt to read a book by a local author. Many states and regions have awards celebrating excellence in local authors. For me, the Minnesota Book Awards is a good place to start.

Does your locality recognize authors? What kinds of awards are given? How are the award decisions made?

Also, don’t feel limited to the specific book that received the award. Many authors are really being recognized for a lifetime of achievement. You might want to read the specific book being recognized, or read one of their earlier works. Of course, if the author is being recognized for a debut novel that may be more difficult!

The challenge for August is two fold. First, I want to encourage you to read a book by an author of color who has won an award. But just as important, I want us all to examine how awards are decided and who decides them. What practices are baked into these prestigious awards? Why do they repeatedly keep out the amazing work of black, brown, and Indigenous authors? Can we change those practices? Or should we develop new systems of recognition entirely?

I also want to be clear that the fact these awards have been neglecting black, brown, and Indigenous authors is not a reflection on those authors skill or ability. It is only a reflection on the racism (and, as others have noted, the sexism) that has been systematically built into those awards from the beginning.

What are you reading for August? Let us know the results of your research in the comments below!

We’ve gone ad free and we need your help to stay that way! Consider making a donation to Lonely Cryptid Media to help keep our site ad free and support our mission to elevate queer, pro-feminist, and anti-racist media.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is donate_lcm.png

31 thoughts on “Celebrating Award Winning Authors for the Reading Writers of Color Challenge”

  1. I haven’t decided what I’m going to read for August yet, but I had to share a recommendation. “Reawaking Our Ancestors’ Lines: Revitalizing Inuit Traditional Tattooing” gathered and compiled by Angela Hovak Johnston is an incredible book! It was a 2020 AILA Honor Book in the young adult category.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. I am only about to start into this month‘s prompt… have to look at my TBR pile of Bipoc authors and see if any of those books won any awards. I don‘t follow awards very closely—I tend to look at the nominations for the Hugos and Nebula and read a few of the nominated short stories and novellas, and therefor I hadn‘t realized that the Tiptree Award had been renamed! Anyway, for August I will sray with SF, Fantasy or Horror, as usual.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Award Winning Authors for the Reading Writers of Color Challenge – Cathy's Reading Bonanza

  4. I’ll read a “classic” award winner: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. It’s on my tbr pile for a while and this challenge is just the little nudge I needed to actually read it.

    Like

    Reply

  5. I’m going to be finishing a book I started a few weeks ago, The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya! She’s a multidisciplinary artist who has won multiple awards for both her writing and music. I’m excited to finish it 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  6. I will be reading The City We Became by NK Jemisin in August. And if I find the time I will also read Beloved by Toni Morrison. So many people have recommended this book to me and I still haven’t read it (thank you for the reminder @papierkrone!)

    Like

    Reply

  7. For August I will be reading Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. I started it once but life got in the way. She’s an amazingly talented Nigerian American writer of speculative fiction. For an intro, you can catch some of her stories (and those of many other authors of color) on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast.

    She has received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature, the Parallax Award, and been a finalist for a Nebula Award, the Parralax award (again), the Kindred Award, the NAACP Image Award, the Essence Magazine Literary Award, and the Golden Duck Award. (This is all listed in this book, published 2016, I’m sure she has won more since then!)

    If you like YA fiction in magical settings, this is gong to be a must-read. I look forward to starting over and to getting to enjoy this work in its entirety.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. I’m very overloaded this month and trying to double up on my reading challenges… can anyone recommend a popular history/microhistory that would fit this prompt? I’ve already read Isabel Wilkerson’s books.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  12. Pingback: First Line Friday — Rosewater – Cathy's Reading Bonanza

  13. I would up going with Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, which won several literary awards. It’s based on the life of an Algerian bookseller and publisher, but though extremely well researched, is less history than emotional atmosphere.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  14. I will be reading The Trials of Brother Jero by Wole Soyinka. This will be my second book written by a Nigerian author. I have read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and loved it!

    Like

    Reply
  18. Pingback: #ReadPOC October Challenge: Read More Nonfiction by Authors of Color!
  19. Pingback: The Final Challenge for Reading Writers of Color 2021: Published This Year
  20. Pingback: Wrapping up that challenge… – Cathy's Reading Bonanza

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s