By Lauren
The 2024 winners of the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes were announced earlier this week at New York’s Columbia University. Read on to see what they are and what the jurists had to say about them.
Fiction
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
“A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.”
“Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.”
General Nonfiction
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall
“A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations.”
“In A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Nathan Thrall—hailed for his “severe allergy to conventional wisdom” (Time)—offers an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth.”
History
No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones
“A breathtakingly original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents.”
“Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.”
Biography
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
“A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.”
“In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.”
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
“A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.”
“With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.”
Memoir or Autobiography
Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza
“A genre-bending account of the author’s 20-year-old sister, murdered by a former boyfriend, that mixes memoir, feminist investigative journalism and poetic biography stitched together with a determination born of loss.”
“Using her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana’s loved ones—to document her sister’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.”
Poetry
Tripas: Poems by Brandon Som
“A collection that deeply engages with the complexities of the poet’s dual Mexican and Chinese heritage, highlighting the dignity of his family’s working lives, creating community rather than conflict.”
“Enacting a cómo se dice poetics, a dialogic poem-making that inventively listens to heritage languages and transcribes family memory, Som participates in a practice of mem(oir), placing each poem’s ear toward a confluence of history, labor, and languages, while also enacting a kind of “telephone” between cultures.”
Drama
Primary Trust by Eboni Booth
“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.”