People of color were heavily represented at the 2018 National Book Awards, making it one of the most diverse award years ever for the prestigious black-tie gala in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday night.
The top prize for fiction went to Sigrid Nuñez for her novel “The Friend,” about a woman coping with a friend’s death after his suicide as she also cares for his Great Dane.
“For a writer, nothing is ever quite as bad as it is for other people, because no matter how dreadful, it could be of use,” Nuñez said.
The nonfiction prize was a surprise, going to first-time author Jeffrey C. Stewart for “The New Negro: The Life of Alan Locke” about a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.
“I have to say, it’s unbelievable to me,” Stewart said. “If Locke were here right now he wouldn’t have a family as a gay man who led a closeted life, with crushing aloneness. He was able to create a world of dancers and artists, the New Negro, not just for black people, for everyone.”
Elizabeth Acevedo won for young people’s literature for “The Poet X.” The Dominican-American writer said she always considered herself an outsider.
“I walk through the world with a chip on my shoulder. As the child of immigrants, as a black woman, as a Latina, I always have to prove I’m worthy — it’s how I walk through the world. Until I meet others who say, ‘I have never seen my story until I read you.’ Thanks to all the readers who tell me why books matter.”
Comedian Nick Offerman of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” — a published author himself — mixed humor, bawdy jokes and political commentary as the master of ceremonies at the 69th annual awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street.
“I should hope that I and you, the esteemed intellectuals gathered in this hallowed dining area, are here to celebrate not sins of the flesh, but those loftier accomplishments,” he said. “In our inexorable pursuit of freedom and human rights, books serve us as weapons and also as shields. They are, perhaps, the greatest creation of humankind — one that is living, and always growing. What can I say? They make me horny. I’m a fan.”
The Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters went to Isabel Allende, born in Peru, raised in Chile and a refugee in Venezuela before arriving in the United States more than 30 years ago.
Her 22 books have sold more than 75 million copies worldwide. She was the first Spanish-language writer to win the award and only the second person born outside the United States to win it. She said she accepted the award “on behalf of millions of people like myself who have come to this country in search of a new life.
“I look Chilean, and I dream, cook, make love, and write in Spanish. Making love — it would feel ridiculous panting in English,” she said, adding “My lover doesn’t speak a word of Spanish.”
But she also put in a political stake. “This is a dark time, my friends. It is a time of war in many places and potential war everywhere. A time of nationalism and racism … I write to preserve memory against the ocean of oblivion and to bring people together. I believe in the power of stories.”
But Allende added that while she found much to criticize, she was proud to be an American citizen.
The other lifetime achievement award went to Doron Weber, an author and also program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which he pushed to endow artists and writers. “I don’t have to remind you that especially today we need to safeguard creative freedom for writers of every stripe…we must defend their rights, or lose them.”
Justin Phillip Reed snagged the prize in poetry for “Indecency.”
“I am standing here with ancestral hands on my shoulders still not knowing what to make of this epithet ‘Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry,’” said the black author who dedicated the award to his grandfather.
“As a poet, it is kind of my business to get hung up on words,” he continued, adding: “What’s next? I want to feel a fullness: to love the vast proliferation of voices and blurred countenances…”
For the first time since 1983, the National Book Foundation also awarded a prize for translated literature. Winner Yoko Tawada was not there to accept the award for her novel “The Emissary” because she said she had three speaking engagements scheduled in Tokyo that she would have had to cancel. Her co-winner, translator Margaret Mitsutani, was there.
“Translators are nothing without authors,” Mitsutani said.