National Book Award: Winners, Finalists, and Longlisted Titles

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National Book Award Medals

The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. National Book Awards are given in five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.

Here we highlight the winners of African descent. The first African-American writer to win a National Book Award was Ralph Ellison, in 1953, for Invisible Man.

One Book Honored by the National Book Foundation in 1994

Finalist – Nonfiction
Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society

Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society

by John Edgar Wideman

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List Price: $15.00
Vintage Books (Aug 29, 1995)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 224 pages
ISBN: 9780679737513Publisher: Penguin Random House
Book Description:

With resonant artistry and unflagging directness, Wideman examines the tragedy of race and the gulf it cleaves between black fathers and black sons. He does so chiefly through the lens of his own relations with his remote father, producing a memoir that belongs alongside the classics of Richard Wright and Malcolm X.