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2020 Pulitzer Prizes

2020-05-06 19:13 #0 by: Evelina

Here is the New York Times guide to the Pulitzer Prize books and finalists for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, history and biography.

www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/books/pulitzer-prize-books.amp.html

“Fifteen books were recognized as winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize on Monday, in the categories of fiction, general history, biography, poetry and general nonfiction.

Winner: “The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead

In his latest novel, the “Underground Railroad” writer fictionalized the story of a Florida school where dozens of black boys were tortured and buried in a secret graveyard. “Were Whitehead’s only aim to shine an unforgiving light on a redacted chapter of racial terrorism in the American chronicle, that would be achievement enough,” wrote our reviewer. But Whitehead “applies a master storyteller’s muscle not just to excavating a grievous past but to examining the process by which Americans undermine, distort, hide or ‘neatly erase’ the stories he is driven to tell.”

I just started listening to this on audible! It’s surprisingly pretty short, only a little over 6 hours.

Host of Apartment Gardening | Ashtanga Yoga | Literature | MigraineSunWave

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2020-05-07 08:02 #1 by: Niklas

Interesting topic. There should be a lot for him to write about in that genre.

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2020-05-07 14:23 #2 by: Evelina

That’s for sure! And it is really important. I just finished the book. It’s good. I like the way he writes. He often writes with short full stop sentences. They are to the point, but powerful.

“If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.”

“You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

“We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.”

Host of Apartment Gardening | Ashtanga Yoga | Literature | MigraineSunWave

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2020-05-08 07:00 #3 by: Niklas

He seems to know his Strunk. 🙂 I like that way of writing too. I makes it easy to understand. No unnecessary words, sentences or paragraphs.

> *“You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”*

Interesting sentence. What would be the point of having or changing laws if you believed that it had no bearing on what people did?

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2020-05-08 07:28 #4 by: Evelina

I forgot to share this. In the end of the novel, Whitehead shares that his novel is based on very true history. The Nickel Academy is based on the Dozier School for Boys. https://www.google.se/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/16/boys-were-beaten-abused-florida-reform-school-now-colson-whitehead-fictionalizes-that-history/%3foutputType=amp.

#3 He is saying that racist laws, such as segregation, can be changed but that doesn’t mean that people will stop being racist. I don’t think he means that it wouldn’t have any affect on how people will treat each other, just that it doesn’t fix everything. Jim Crow laws ended in 1965, I believe. Blacks are still getting shot and killed by the police in the United States all the time. A case that is getting a lot of media attention recently is the case of a 25-year old black man, Ahmaud Arbery, who went on a run in Georgia in February. Two white men, a man - who was an off duty police officer, and his son cornered Ahmed in an alley. They shot and killed him and the two white men said it was self defense. They said they thought he looked like a burglary suspect. They were finally recently charged and now the case is going to be brought before a grand jury. www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/us/ahmed-arbery-shooting-georgia.amp.html.

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