Edward P. Jones Among Hurston/Wright Winners
By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Edward P. Jones added to his long list of honors last night, winning the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the fiction category for his story collection, "All Aunt Hagar's Children."
Jones wasn't able to attend the award ceremony at the National Press Club. Bryan Christian, marketing director for Jones's publisher, HarperCollins, accepted the award for the somewhat reclusive Washington writer, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his novel "The Known World." Christian drew laughter and applause when he summed up Jones's probable reaction to the news.
"For those of you who know Edward," Christian said, "he would be thrilled as much as Edward is able to be thrilled."
Aminatta Forna won the debut fiction category for "Ancestor Stones." It tells the story of an African woman living in England (as Forna does) who returns to her native country. There she encounters four aunts whose lives reveal the complex history of her family and her childhood home.
"Sometimes a country loses its way," Forna said. "My country of Sierra Leone was one such country. Of the many things that fall to writers, I think that chronicling and understanding how that happens is one of them."
Forna went on to thank her father, "who was a political prisoner in Sierra Leone in the 1970s and who was executed in 1975." She dedicated her award "to the people of Sierra Leone -- to those who died in the civil war and to those who survived."
Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, won the nonfiction award for her memoir, "Unbowed." The book tells of Maathai's struggle to found the Green Belt movement, a grass-roots attempt to reverse environmental destruction in Kenya.
Maathai -- who is now Kenya's deputy minister for the environment, natural resources and wildlife -- also was unable to attend last night. The judges said that her book should make her feel "warrior proud."
The poetry award went to Patricia Smith for "Teahouse of the Almighty."
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation initiated the Legacy Awards in 2002. Borders Books and Music has sponsored them from the beginning.
"There was a void in terms of literary recognition that came directly from the black writing community," Marita Golden, the foundation's president and co-founder, said yesterday. "We started to fill that void."
The awards are open to all published writers of African descent. Golden said she was especially pleased at their international flavor.
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie agreed. Adichie, who could not be there last night, was a finalist in the fiction category for her novel "Half of a Yellow Sun," set during the Biafran war. "One of the things I like is the idea that my work is being noticed by African American readers," she said in a telephone interview. "It matters to me."
Golden called the debut fiction category especially important. Fledgling literary writers, she said, need recognition at a time when "the publishing industry's fascination with more commercial fiction is distracting them."
Indeed, for the past two years, the Hurston/Wright awards have included a "contemporary fiction" category intended to honor innovative commercial fiction. It was dropped this year and poetry was added, but Golden said that, given more resources, she would favor doing both -- perhaps adding children's books as well.
A high point of the evening came when Sonia Sanchez, whom Golden described as a "humanitarian, activist and prolific author of poetry, plays and children's books," received the Hurston/Wright North Star Award for her lifetime of achievement.
Golden recalled first encountering Sanchez at Howard University. Then a college student attending a conference, Golden found herself in awe of "this small, fiery poet" who struck her as "an intellectual and artistic burning bush."
Sanchez got a standing ovation as she walked up to collect her award. Then she watched as four poets -- Carolyn Joyner, Derek Brown, Denise Hart and Abdul Ali -- honored her with a dramatic reading excerpted from her work:
I say -- Where is your fire? . . .
Where is our beautiful fire that gave light to the world
The fire of pyramids
The fire that burned through the holds of slave ships and made us breathe . . .
"I have not heard those poems in so many years," Sanchez said, thanking the poets, "because those are all poems from my first book." She went on to thank Golden, whom Sanchez said she used to drive crazy by asking "why are there no poetry awards?"
Prince George's County Council member David Harrington received the foundation's Ella Baker Award for Civic Leadership. The Shrine of the Black Madonna, one of the nation's largest black-owned bookstores, received the Madam C.J. Walker award.
Category winners took home $3,000, with finalists receiving $1,500.
Besides Adichie, the other fiction finalist was Calvin Baker, for "Dominion." Louis Chude-Sokei was a nonfiction finalist for "The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy and the African Diaspora," as was Kym Ragusa for "The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging."
Angela Nissel, co-producer and writer for "Scrubs," served as master of ceremonies.
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