L.A.’s Tess Gunty, Imani Perry among winners of 2022 National Book Awards
A long-running series highlights the books that have been nominated and that have won the National Book Award since 1945, in New York City on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2020. The list includes four books about women: “The Other Daughter,” “All of Us,” “The Love of the Last Tycoon” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
In its 32-year history, the National Book Awards has awarded the top fiction, biography and nonfiction books.
This year marked the third year that nonfiction books were nominated in their categories, the first time that women’s and young adult books were in separate categories. The awards will be given on Jan. 19, but the nominees will be announced on Wednesday.
The awards recognize the most compelling books about the American experience — in American history, science, social sciences and arts.
Here’s a look at the 2020 award winners, along with books about women and books featuring the voices of racial minorities:
‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ by Mary Jeanette Holm is the best nonfiction book in the nonfiction category of the 2020 National Book Awards. Holm is a writer, teacher, scholar and mother. Her book is about how her son Michael’s recovery from a brain tumor, after surgery, has been hard on her: “I’m not sure his recovery is one of the most exciting and uplifting things I’ve ever read.” Her mother, Carol, is African-American. “I can’t stop thinking about books I wish my mother had told me,” Holm says. Other people she wishes she’d told: “I don’t have a lot of stories about racial injustice, because a lot of times they have to be told to be told. I don’t talk much about my parents being Holocaust survivors. I have a lot to share, but I can’t share it because of the color of my skin.”
‘The Love of the Last Tycoon’ by Jonathan Fran
