Nicole Hannah-Jones wins 2021 Iowa Authors Award

[SharonClark]

Hannah-Jones led the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project that made right-wingers heads explode.

. . .
Now a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and professor, Hannah-Jones went back to that chest — digging through for those magazines, feeling that label addressed directly to her — when she heard the Des Moines Public Library Foundation selected her as the 2021 Iowa Author Award recipient. She wanted to hold those issues, she said, as a sort of tangible way “to reflect on how blessed I have been and how far I have come.”

She can’t call the moment “full-circle” because, honestly, joining the ranks of previous winners like John Irving, Bill Bryson and Jane Smiley wasn’t a reality she envisioned a year ago — let alone as a child.

“I never imagined that I would be on that list,” she said. “It’s completely shocking, and I am honored to be in company with all of those amazing people and writers and to represent my home state.”

“You know,” she added, “I’m just a girl from Waterloo.”
. . .
Her book, “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” an expansion of the series published in the New York Times Magazine in 2019, and its children’s book companion, “The 1619 Project: Born on the Water,” will be released less than a week before her appearance in Iowa.
. . .
In the runup to the 400th anniversary of the first known arrival of slaves on American shores, Hannah-Jones conceived of and led the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, a collection of more than 30 works, including essays, podcasts, photos and poems, that examine how the institution of slavery shaped, and continues to shape, our nation.
. . .

source: [link:https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/columnists/courtney-crowder/2021/09/19/nikole-hannah-jones-waterloo-native-2021-iowa-authors-award-des-moines-public-library-foundation/8358330002/|

[Kid Berwyn]

1. Truth

From GoodReads:

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Editor)

A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on one of the most consequential journalistic events of recent years: The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project,” which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on the original 1619 Project, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique.

The book also features a significant elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a profound case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life. (less)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57717410-the-1619-project

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. This is a well deserved honor