NEW YORK — Author-playwright Jessica Hagedorn, “Yellowface” novelist R.F. Kuang and poet Monica Youn are among this year’s recipients of the 45th annual American Book Awards, which honor “outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum” of the country’s artistic and cultural community.
The awards were announced Monday by the nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which Ishmael Reed helped establish in 1976 as a way to champion multicultural literature.
In the diverse spirit of the foundation, winners ranged from the late Rabbi Michael Lerner, longtime editor of the progressive magazine Tikkun, to the Latino poet and performance artist Paul S. Flores, to the recent University of Southern California graduate Asna Tabassum, whose valedictorian speech last spring was cancelled by the school over concerns for her support of Palestinians.
Kuang’s “Yellowface,” a bestselling satire of book publishing, was one of several contemporary works cited. Others included Youn’s poetry collection “From From,” Flores’ “We Still Be: Poems and Performances,” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Independence: A Novel,” Debra Magpie Earling’s “The Lost Journals of Sacajewea: A Novel” and Barbara D. Savage’s “Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar.”
Hagedorn, whose books include the 1990 novel “Dogeaters,” and Lerner, who died last month at age 81, each were praised for lifetime achievement. Tabassum was given an anti-censorship award and recipients of criticism prizes included Mehdi Hasan’s “Zeteo” and Lynnée Denise’s “Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters.”