Since 1917, the Pulitzer Prizes honour the best in journalism and the arts.
ADVERTISEMENTSeveral stories tackling race, slavery and the US Civil War, both real and invented, were among the winners this year for the Pulitzer Prizes, the US-based awards that honour the best in journalism and the arts.
Here is a breakdown of the laureates, in eight categories covering the arts – which focus on books, theatre and music.
Fiction - “Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips
Set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War, the author’s third instalment in a trilogy about different wars, follows a 12-year-old girl and her mother, who was abused by a Confederate soldier.
Phillips, a West Virginia native, said she began writing eight years ago, and found the Civil War era increasingly, and uncomfortably, timely.
“The Civil War still has such an enormous hold on this country,” she said. “I hope people can pick up a piece of fiction and put their politics aside and enter into feeling what it was like for people at that time.”
History - “No Right to an Honest living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era” by Jacqueline Jones
Jones, a longtime faculty member of the University of Texas at Austin who has been a Pulitzer finalist twice before, noted that so much remains to be written about the Civil War because until recently narratives focused on the battlefield.
She began working on “No Right to an Honest Living” because she wondered how Black people were treated in Boston at a time when the city was a centre of anti-slavery activism.
“It turns out, the radical abolitionists represented a very small minority in Boston and that the social division of labour was really discriminatory," she said.
Drama - “Primary Trust” by Eboni Booth
The Pulitzer committee called Booth’s play “a simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”
The drama is about a Black bookstore worker’s unexpected journey after he loses his longtime job. The lonely, full-grown man with an imaginary friend drinks away his life at a tiki bar until he is aided by some residents of his small town outside Rochester, New York.
Booth, a New York City native, began her career as a stage actor and has also written for TV shows “We Were the Lucky Ones” and “Julia”.
After winning, Booth told the New York Times, “I wrote this play because I feel so alone so much of the time, or I have felt so alone, particularly when I was growing up. (...) I wrote about being hungry for connection, and then I got so much connection through the production, and that was very meaningful.”
Biography - “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom” by Ilyon Woo AND “King: A Life” by Jonathan Eig
The two winners for this year’s biography category both focused on the African-American experience.
“King” offers a “revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.” with new source material that helps readers better understand the civil rights leader’s life. It also takes a more nuanced look at the historical figure, exploring the self-questioning and depression that punctuated his actions and determination.
“Master Slave Husband Wife” tells the true story of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848 by disguising themselves as a disabled white man and his manservant. They later became famous abolitionists once they safely arrived in the North. The story addresses the intersection of race, class and disability.
General Non-Fiction - “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” by Nathan Thrall
This intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank is told through the portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a school bus accident.
The book was adapted from a 2021 article Thrall wrote for the New York Review of Books. The journalist explores systemic issues in Israel that affect Palestinian lives – explaining how security regulations made life difficult for the man as he searched for his child.
Memoir-Autobiography - “Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice” by Cristina Rivera Garza
Through a blend of “memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography,” Garza investigates the murder of her 20-year-old sister in Mexico City. Murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Garza’s sister was considered a victim of a “crime of passion”.
ADVERTISEMENTThe writer explores the politics and double standards surrounding violence against women, while approaching her own grief and loss.
Poetry - “Tripas” by Brandon Som
Som’s second collection of poems leans into the complexities of his dual Mexican-Chinese heritage. The Arizona native’s work focuses on “community rather than conflict,” according to the Pulitzer committee, and highlights “the dignity of his family’s working lives.”
Som is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, San Diego.
Music - “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith)" by Tyshawn Sorey
The 43-year-old American composer and multi-instrumentalist was the New York Times’ “composer of the year” in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic inspired him to create a prolific body of work, despite restrictions on live performance.
Sorey’s saxophone concerto premiered on 16 March 2023 at Atlanta Symphony Hall. The Pulitzer committee called it a “beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle.”
ADVERTISEMENT
