Here are the 10 nonfiction picks on the National Book Awards’ longlist
Hip-hop, a miscarriage of justice and conflict in El Salvador are just a few of the personal and political histories that play into the 2019 longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
The 10 titles announced today were chosen from 600 submissions and include four memoirs, among them “Solitary,” Albert Woodfox’s account of four decades spent in solitary confinement for a crime he didn’t commit.
Established writers such as poet Carolyn Forché (writing about Central America in “What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance”) appear alongside debut authors such as Sarah M. Broom, focusing on her family’s storied New Orleans property in her memoir, “The Yellow House.”
Hanif Abdurraqib’s “Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest” marks the first time hip-hop has been a focal point in one of the longlist titles. The author grapples with the historic representation and rise of black culture in the ’90s.
Self-taught chef Iliana Regan’s “Burn the Place,” her memoir of growing up gay in a hostile town and launching a beloved restaurant in Chicago, marks the return of food writing to the National Book Awards. Julia Child won in 1980.
The foundation will announce finalists Oct. 8 and winners at the private National Book Awards ceremony and benefit dinner Nov. 20 in New York City.
Here is the full list:
Hanif Abdurraqib, “Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest”
University of Texas Press
Sarah M. Broom, “The Yellow House”
Grove Press/Grove Atlantic
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Thick: And Other Essays”
The New Press
Carolyn Forché, “What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance”
Penguin Press/Penguin Random House
Greg Grandin, “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America”
Metropolitan Books/Macmillan Publishers
Patrick Radden Keefe, “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”
Doubleday/Penguin Random House
Iliana Regan, “Burn the Place: A Memoir”
Agate Midway/Agate Publishing Inc.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership”
The University of North Carolina Press
David Treuer, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present”
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House
Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, “Solitary”
Grove Press/Grove Atlantic
The foundation previously announced longlists for poetry, children’s books and translated literature.
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