Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominees for the nonfiction genre read segments of their nonfiction work and amplified voices of Black authors at virtual event hosted by Politics and Prose as part of its Live! Series.
By Jacqueline Smith
WASHINGTON – Nominated authors read segments of their nonfiction work competing for The Hurston/Wright Foundation, which honors the best authors of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry in Black literature globally, at a virtual reading streamed October 10. The event was hosted virtually by D.C.’s Politics and Prose as part of its Live! Series and moderated by Ralph Eubanks. Each author focused on their stories, but all contributed to discussion surrounding living in a society with systemic racism and how to combat this as a Black individual.
Nominees also shared what they can do as authors to keep Blackness from being seen as a problem. Each shared that the problem is not Black life itself, but the social order and political, economic, and class systems that perpetuate racism. Authors agreed to continue creating work that strives to prevent racism instead.
Nonfiction nominee Dani McClain’s work, We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood, features experience of fellow mothers in an attempt to understand how to raise her own daughter in a society prejudiced against Black individuals. McClain described the difficulty parents face when deciding schools for their children to attend, and how important it is for Black children attending predominantly white schools to have their identities positively reinforced through peer groups.
Next, Clyde Ford shared a segment of his work, Think Black: A Memoir, which describes Ford’s father’s experiences with racism as the first Black software engineer in America. The memoir comes full-circle, as Clyde followed his father’s career path and learned to understand how to subtly combat institutional racism that was still present at IBM. Ford shared that his memoir quickly became about the relationship between technology, race, and racism.
Saidiya Hartman in her work, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals, explores lives of unnamed young black women in the 1900s. Hartman explained that her work considers how to think about narrating history from the perspective of unnamed individuals who contributed to history. She used a variety of archival elements combined with imagination and speculation to fill in the gaps of the average individual and their agency.
Albert Woodfox in his work, Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope, tells the story of Woodfox’s four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. When asked about the connection between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery, Woodfox explained technology was society’s only change during his forty years in prison. “The foundation, the basis of racism, whether it was institutional or political, cultural or individual and systematic application was greatly enhanced by technology that exists in society today. I’ve always been aware the power technology plays in maintaining racism in this country.”
Damon Young in his work, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays, explores his efforts to endure struggles that come with being black by analyzing himself and society. Young explained that he makes no effort to remove the humor or honesty that describes the “absurd nature of our existence in America”.
At the time of this nonfiction reading, the winners of the entire competition among nonfiction, fiction, debut fiction, and poetry nominees had not been announced yet. The 19th Annual Ceremony occurred virtually October 16 and three judges were assigned to each genre to choose a final winner from each of the four categories. Winners of the Legacy Award in each category are as follows: Albert Woodfox, whose memoir “Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope”won the Nonfiction award; Jeffrey Colvin, whose novel “Africaville” won the Debut Fiction award; Curdella Forbes, whose novel “A Tall History of Sugar” won the Fiction award; and Osman Ladan, whose poetry collection “Exiles of Eden” won the Poetry award. Recordings of the Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry virtual readings can be found online on the Politics and Prose Live! Series’ YouTube channel.