The BCALA Literary Award Winning Books
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First presented at the Second National Conference of African American Librarians in 1994, the BCALA Literary Awards acknowledge outstanding works of fiction and nonfiction for adult audiences by African American authors.
Monetary awards are presented in the following categories: First Novelist, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Honor Book citations are also awarded in fiction and nonfiction without any accompanying monetary remuneration.
The BCALA also hosts an annual conference, the National Conference of African American Librarians.
3 Books Honored in 1994
Winner Fiction
A Lesson Before Dying
List Price: $15.00
Vintage Books (Sep 01, 1994)
Fiction, Paperback, 256 pages
ISBN: 9780375702709Publisher: Penguin Random House
Book Description:
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men arekilled; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jeffersons godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resistingand defyingthe expected.
Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and thesame compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men arekilled; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jeffersons godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resistingand defyingthe expected.
Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and thesame compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.
Winner First Novelist
Losing Absalom
List Price: $15.00
Coffee House Press (Apr 01, 2005)
Fiction, Paperback, 200 pages
ISBN: 9781566891707Publisher: Coffee House Press
Book Description:
Sonny Goodman may have hopped the modern underground railroad called education and arrived in far-flung Minneapolis, but with the impending death of his father, North Philadelphia is calling him home. Quickly caught in the web that inner-city life has woven around his familys dreams, Sonny must find the strength to confront the toll urban corrosion has wrought upon the ones he loves.Named Best First Novel by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, winner of the Minnesota Book Award and compared to the work of James Baldwin and August Wilson, Alexs D. Pates highly absorbing debut novel rings with a truth as immediate as body counts in the headlines, as enduring as a classic tragedy.San Francisco Chronicle
Sonny Goodman may have hopped the modern underground railroad called education and arrived in far-flung Minneapolis, but with the impending death of his father, North Philadelphia is calling him home. Quickly caught in the web that inner-city life has woven around his familys dreams, Sonny must find the strength to confront the toll urban corrosion has wrought upon the ones he loves.Named Best First Novel by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, winner of the Minnesota Book Award and compared to the work of James Baldwin and August Wilson, Alexs D. Pates highly absorbing debut novel rings with a truth as immediate as body counts in the headlines, as enduring as a classic tragedy.San Francisco Chronicle
Winner Nonfiction
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race
List Price: $15.00
Holt Paperbacks (Dec 15, 1994)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 752 pages
ISBN: 9780805035681Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
Book Description:
This monumental biographyeight years in the research and writingtreats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.
This monumental biographyeight years in the research and writingtreats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.
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