When you’re on the hunt for your next good book, prize lists are a good place to find inspiration. Just so you know what’s what: Pulitzer Prizes are given to American authors and address American life and culture; the Booker Prize is the much-celebrated British equivalent.
The National Book Award, although also an American prize awarded only to US citizens, isn’t limited to stories of American culture. The awards are equally coveted, but winners of the Booker are greeted with much fanfare (and a bigger check). Essentially, if you see one of these shiny gold medallions on a (freshly reprinted) book jacket, you’ve chosen well.
Here are a few of my favorites.
Award-Winning Book Recommendations
The Nickel Boys—Colson Whitehead
The Pulitzer Prize, 2020
Based on real-life accounts of abuse at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida—a place Whitehead calls a “pain factory”—this novel follows Elwood Curtis, a fictionalized Black teenager committed to the reform school for an imaginary offense. The actual institution operated for more than a century before finally being shut down, but Elwood’s story takes place in the early 1960s. Admittedly, The Nickel Boys is not a book for everyone; you’ll need a strong stomach and an even stronger commitment to staring down the truth of America’s haunted past
The Overstory—Richard Powers
The Pulitzer Prize, 2019
This is an epic novel—and I’m not using that word the way my eight-year-old does. With nine central characters (and that’s only accounting for the humans; you’ll grow attached to more than a few trees) and a sprawling timeline, The Overstory is a true epic, interested not only in the fate of its characters but of humankind. Powers makes it clear he aims not to entertain but to wake us up to the harm our greed and ignorance are causing the natural world, yet polemic is wrapped in a story both rich and compelling. You’ll come away with an enlarged awareness and may, like I did, find yourself spending significantly more time staring up at the trees.
Shuggie Bain—Douglas Stewart
The Booker Prize, 2020
Though not for lack of thought, I can’t explain why I or anyone would be drawn to a novel as sad as Shuggie Bain. Even the author’s rhythmic, often breathtaking prose is insufficient to explain why this painful story of little Shuggie and his mother Agnes resonates so deeply. Set in 1980s Glasgow, Shuggie finds himself on the outside of everything: the neighborhood boys, his mother’s addiction to alcohol, their squalid flat, even himself. Until the end, though, he remains a bulwark of hope in a dark world. This story will tear through you, and you will be better for it.
Sing, Unburied, Sing—Jesmyn Ward
National Book Award, 2017
Having also won for her novel Salvage the Bones, Ward took home a second National Book Award in 2017 with this Southern Gothic story of a fraught-from-the-start road trip north from Mississippi. Heavy with poetic language and imagery, the novel is anchored by teenage Jojo, who wrestles his toddler sister in the backseat while his meth-addicted mother and her friend navigate drug deals, gas stations, and police stops. Largely inside the space of a sedan, Sing, Unburied, Sing tackles profound intergenerational trauma—but shines a light, too, on the unshakeable love inside a family.
A Local Selection
Thresh & Hold—Marlanda Dekine
New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, 2021
Published by Spartanburg’s Hub City Press, Dekine’s most recent poetry collection has received national recognition for good reason. Vigorous and unflinching, the poet reckons with their Gullah-Geechee heritage and forges, as if through incantation, a new identity as a Black and queer body. With an almost palpable sense of southern place, Dekine offers up a poetic voice that is at once accessible and transcendent. Check it out—this award winner is as local as local gets.
