The American Book Awards are an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers.""For Immediate Release:" (August 5, 2010). Before Columbus Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. Previous winners include novelists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, and historians such as Dana Gioia, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, MacKenzie Bezos, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Derrick Bell, Robin Kelley, Joy Harjo and Tommy J. Curry.
National Book Awards In 1980, the unrelated National Book Awards was renamed American Book Awards. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards."History Of The National Book Awards". National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012. Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.
Recipients
1980s
1980
Douglas Woolf for Future Preconditional: A Collection Edward Dorn for Hello, La Jolla Jayne Cortez for Mouth on Paper Leslie Marmon Silko for Ceremony Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for Random Possession Milton Murayama for All I Asking for Is My Body Quincy Troupe for Snake Back Solos Rudolfo Anaya for Tortuga, a novel
1981
Alta for Shameless Hussy Alan Chong Lau for Songs for Jadina Bienvenido N. Santos for Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories Helen Adam for Turn Again to Me & Other Poems Lionel Mitchell for Traveling Light Miguel Algarín for On Call Nicholasa Mohr for Felita Peter Blue Cloud for Back Then Tomorrow Robert Kelly for The Time of Voice: Poems 1994–1996 Rose Drachler for The Choice Susan Howe for The Liberties Toni Cade Bambara for The Salt Eaters
1982
Al Young for Bodies and Soul Duane Niatum for Songs for the Harvester of Dreams: Poems E. L. Mayo for Collected Poems E L Mayo Frank Chin for The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon Hilton Obenzinger for This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 Jerome Rothenberg for Pre-Faces and Other Writings Joyce Carol Thomas for Marked by Fire Leroy Quintana for Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets Lorna Dee Cervantes for Emplumada Ronald Phillip Tanaka for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry Russell Banks for Book of Jamaica Tato Laviera for Enclave
1983
Barbara Christian for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976 Cecilia Liang for Chinese Folk Poetry Evangelina Vigil-Piñón for Thirty: An' Seen a Lot Harriet Rohmer for Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento James D. Houston for Californians: Searching for the Golden State Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn for Pet food & tropical apparitions John A. Williams for Click Song, a novel Joy Kogawa for Obasan Judy Grahn for The Queen of Wands: Poetry Nash Candelaria for Not by the Sword Peter Guralnick for Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians Seán Ó Tuama for An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred: Poems of the Dispossessed
1984
Cecil Brown for Days Without Weather Gary Snyder for Axe Handles: Poems Howard Schwartz, Mark Podwal for The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman Imamu Amiri Baraka for Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men Jesús Colón for A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches Joseph Bruchac for Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets Maurice Kenny for The Mama Poems Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for The heat bird Miné Okubo for Citizen 13660 Paule Marshall for Praisesong for the Widow Ruthanne Lum McCunn, You-shan Tang, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung for Pie-Biter Thomas McGrath for Echoes inside the labyrinth Venkatesh Kulkarni for Naked in Deccan William J. Kennedy for O Albany!
1985
Angela Jackson for Solo in the Box Car Third Floor E Arnold Genthe, John Kuo Wei Tchen for Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown Colleen J. McElroy for Queen of the Ebony Isles Gary Soto for Living Up The Street Peter Irons for Justice at War Keiho Soga, Taisanboku Mori, Sojin Takei, Muin Ozaki for Poets Behind Barbed Wire Louise Erdrich for Love Medicine, a novel Maureen Owen for Amelia Earhart May Sarton for At Seventy: A Journal Robert Edward Duncan for Ground Work: Before the War Ron Jones for Say Ray Sandra Cisneros for The House on Mango Street Sonia Sanchez for Homegirls and Handgrenades Julia Vinograd for The Book of Jerusalem William Oandasan for Round Valley Songs
1986
Anna Lee Walters for The Sun Is Not Merciful: Short Stories Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa for This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color Helen Barolini for The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women Jeff Hannusch for I Hear You Knockin : The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues Linda Hogan for Seeing Through the Sun Miguel Algarín for Time's Now/Ya Es Tiempo Natasha Borovsky for A Daughter of the Nobility Raymond Federman for Smiles on Washington Square: A Love Story of Sorts Susan Howe for My Emily Dickinson Terence Winch for Irish Musicians/American Friends Toshio Mori for Yokohama, California
1987
Ai for SIN Ana Castillo for The Mixquiahuala Letters Cyn Zarco for Cir'cum.nav'i.ga'tion Daniel McGuire for Portrait of Little Boy in darkness Dorothy Bryant for Confessions of Madame Psyche: Memoirs and Letters of Mei-Li Murrow Etheridge Knight for The Essential Etheridge Knight Gary Giddins for Celebrating Bird: The Triumph Of Charlie Parker Harvey Pekar for The New American Splendor Anthology: From Off the Streets of Cleveland James Welch for Fools Crow John Wieners for Selected Poems: 1958–1984 Juan Felipe Herrera for Face Games Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum for liberazione della donna: feminism in Italy Michael Mayo for Practicing Angels: A Contemporary Anthology of San Francisco Bay Area Poetry Septima Poinsette Clark, Cynthia Stokes Brown for Ready from Within: A First Person Narrative Terry McMillan for Mama
1988
Allison Blakely for Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought Charles Olson for The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems Daisy Bates for The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir David Halberstam for The Reckoning Edward Sanders for Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Poems 1961–1985 Gerald Vizenor for Griever: An American Monkey King in China Jimmy Santiago Baca for Martin & Meditations on the South Valley Kesho Y. Scott, Cherry Muhanji, Egyirba High for Tight Spaces Marlon K. Hom for Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown Benjamin Hoff for The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley Ronald Sukenick for Down and in: Life in the Underground Salvatore La Puma for The Boys of Bensonhurst Toni Morrison for Beloved Wing Tek Lum, Tek Lum Lum for Expounding the Doubtful Points
1989
Alma Luz Villanueva for The Ultraviolet Sky Askia M. Touré for From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and Resistance! Audre Lorde for A Burst of Light Carolyn Lau for Wode Shuofa: My Way of Speaking Emory Elliott for Columbia Literary History of the United States Eduardo Galeano for Genesis Frank Chin for The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. Henry Louis Gates for The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism Isabel Allende for Eva Luna J. California Cooper for Homemade Love Jennifer Stone for Stone's Throw Josephine Gattuso Hendin for The Right Thing to Do Leslie Scalapino for way Shuntaro Tanikawa for Floating the River in Melancholy Charles Fanning for The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction William Minoru Hohri for Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress
1990s
1990
Adrienne Kennedy for People Who Led to My Plays Barbara Grizzuti Harrison for Italian Days Daniela Gioseffi for Women on War (Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age) Elizabeth Woody for Hand into Stone: Poems Hualing Nieh for Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China Itabari Njeri for Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone James M. Freeman for Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives John C. Walter, J. Raymond Jones for The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920–1970 John Norton for Light at the End of the Bog José Emilio González for Vivar a Hostos Sergei Kan for Symbolic Immortality: The Tlingit Potlatch of the Nineteenth Century Lloyd A. Thompson for Romans and Blacks Martin Bernal for Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Michelle T. Clinton, Sesshu Foster for Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry Miles Davis for Miles: The Autobiography Paula Gunn Allen for Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mayumi Tsutakawa, Margarita Donnelly for The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology
1991
Alejandro Murguía for Southern Front bell hooks for Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics Bruce Wright for Black Robes, White Justice: Why Our Legal System Doesn't Work for Blacks Charley Trujillo for Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam D. H. Melhem for Heroism in the New Black Poetry: Introductions & Interviews Deborah Keenan for Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile Jessica Hagedorn for Dogeaters John Edgar Wideman for Philadelphia Fire, a novel Joy Harjo for In Mad Love and War Karen Tei Yamashita for Through the Arc of the Rain Forest Lucia Berlin for Homesick: New and Selected Stories Mary Crow Dog for Lakota Woman Meridel Le Sueur for Harvest Song: Collected Essays and Stories Mill Hunk Herald Collective for Overtime: Punchin' Out With the Mill Hunk Herald Magazine Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer for Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory R. Baxter Miller for The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes Thomas Centolella for Terra Firma
1992
A'Lelia Perry Bundles for Madam C.J. Walker Art Spiegelman for The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale Benjamin Alire Sáenz for Calendar of Dust Donna J. Haraway for Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature Fritjof Capra for Belonging to the universe: Explorations on the frontiers of science and spirituality José Antonio Burciaga for Undocumented Love/Amor Indocumentado: A Personal Anthology of Poetry Keith Gilyard for Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence Lucy Thompson for To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman Norma Field for In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End Peter Bacho for Cebu Peter Kalifornsky for Dena'ina Legacy: K'tl'egh'i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky Raymond Andrews for Jessie and Jesus and Cousin Claire Sandra Scofield for Beyond Deserving Sheila Hamanaka for Journey Stephen R. Fox for The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II Steven R. Carter for Hansberry's Drama: Commitment Amid Complexity, Verlyn Klinkenborg for The Last Fine Time William B. Branch, Amiri Baraka, August Wilson for Black Thunder: An Anthology of African-American Drama
1993
Asake Bomani, Belvie Rooks for Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris Christopher Mogil, Peter Woodrow for We Gave Away a Fortune Cornel West for Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times Denise Giardina for Unquiet Earth Diane Glancy for Claiming Breath