By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 4, 2006; C01
Literary awards were bestowed on a new generation of black writers last night, heavy awards given in the heavy names of Zora and Richard.
Nancy Rawles won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the fiction category for "My Jim," a first-person account of Sadie, the wife of the runaway slave in Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn."
Historian John Hope Franklin won in nonfiction category for his autobiography, "Mirror to America."
Clyde W. Ford won in the contemporary fiction category for "The Long Mile." And Denise Nicholas, who starred in television's "Room 222" and "In the Heat of the Night," won in the debut fiction category for "Freshwater Road."
At the National Press Club last night, the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation -- created in 1990 to recognize current black writers and honor their work with the first awards of their kind given to writers of African descent, judged by writers of African descent -- celebrated writing that its founders said met the high standards set by Zora and Richard.
Meaning Zora Neale Hurston, the lyrical modernist, whose writing reflected her passion for people; who wrote: "The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening."
Zora didn't reduce her characters to portray a single social or political point. Instead she delved into metaphors, explaining a different level of knowledge among black people that white people called superstition, explaining in her stories black justice that lingered behind jasmine trees in "Negro yards" parted by clean-swept sidewalks.
And Richard Wright, who produced Bigger Thomas and left us haunted by his words: "Maybe they did not despise him? But they made him feel his black skin by just standing there looking at him, one holding his hand and the other smiling. He felt he had no physical existence at all right then; he was something he hated, the badge of shame which he knew was attached to a black skin. It was a shadowy region, a No Man's Land, the ground that separated the white world from the black that he stood upon."
And you wonder who writes like that anymore.
But Clyde McElvene, co-founder and executive director of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, says writers today produce this kind of quality in literature as they tell stories that incorporate the old and the new, as they continue to tell the stories of black people.
"We are recognizing and rewarding the kind of literature that will be here long after we are gone," McElvene said. "The kind of literature that Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright produced, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois. That is the criterion by which we measure the quality of the writing. That is the standard by which we measure the quality of the nominees."
The finalists in the fiction category were Tayari Jones, whom Essence called "a writer to watch," for "The Untelling," a story about "familial myth-making"; and David Anthony Durham, who began writing as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, for his third novel, "Pride of Carthage," about the Second Punic War.
Finalists for nonfiction were Lisa E. Farrington for "Creating Their Own Image" and Donald Bogle for "Bright Boulevard, Bold Dreams," the untold stories of how blacks made it in Hollywood.
Nicholas did not attend, but a friend read her acceptance speech: "There is nothing better than a good read" that makes you "stay awake late reading on, eyes tired and red with that anxiety of nearing the last page as you reach for the conclusion and wish to God there was more story to go."
Author Marita Golden, a co-founder and now president of the foundation, said in program notes that the "African and African American communities have, for a very long time, needed a way to say, 'Amen,' to their griots, conjurers and word magicians."
Still you wonder how anyone could fill the shoes of Zora and Richard, produce literature that stays on the shelf because each time you read it, between the pages and the years, you find something else they wanted to say.
Since that question can't be answered, you ask another: If Zora and Richard were telling the story of racism and oppression in America in their generations, what is the story of this generation of writers?
You stop finalist Jones, who is glittering in her beauty. She says quickly: "There is a multiplicity of message. We are black writers, but we express our individual stories. It's messier now. You never know what black writing looks like now. When you open a black book, you never know what you might get."
Contemporary fiction winner Ford said: "The first thing any writer is trying to do is tell a story. We are not trying to say something, but tell a story about hopes, aspirations and challenges. I see myself standing on the shoulders of great writers."
Nonfiction winner Franklin was not there. But you still wanted to know how he might answer that question. So you find his son, who accepted the award for him. The son says, "Let me see whether I can get the author to answer that." So he opens his cellphone and calls Franklin, who at 91 is just coming home for the evening in Durham, N.C.
"Let me see," Franklin says. "I think we are still searching unanswered questions about society and where it is. I'm confused about where we are going, not really in the world but with respect to American society. I am not persuaded we are going in the right direction. I am not persuaded we have a genuine commitment to equality."
The foundation's North Star Award, which recognizes those whose writing and/or service to the black writing community have inspired others, went to Paul Coates, founder of Black Classic Press, and William E. Cox, founder and former publisher of Black Issues Book Review.
The Madame C.J. Walker Award, given to businesses that sustain black literature, went to Karibu Books.
The evening's emcee, S. Epatha Merkerson -- Golden still calls her "the sister from 'Law and Order,' " she joked -- navigated with laughter among the deep waters of the audience. Because you know if they can write like Zora or Richard, they are deep.
"I just love being around writers," Merkerson said. "You guys are so witty."