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."
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 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. Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.
Recipients
1980s
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990s
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
- Alice McDermott for Charming Billy
- Anna Linzer for Ghost Dancing
- Brian Ward for Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations
- Chiori Santiago for Home to Medicine Mountain
- E. Donald Two-Rivers for Survivor's Medicine: Short Stories
- Edwidge Danticat for The Farming of Bones
- Judith Roche, Meg McHutchison for First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim
- Gioia Timpanelli for Sometimes the Soul: Two Novellas of Sicily
- Gloria Naylor for The Men of Brewster Place, a novel
- James D. Houston for The Last Paradise
- Jerry Lipka, Gerald V. Mohatt, Ciulistet Group for Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yupák Eskimo Examples
- Trey Ellis for Right Here, Right Now
- Josip Novakovich for Salvation and Other Disasters
- Lauro Flores for The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature
- LuÃÂs Alberto Urrea for Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life
- Nelson George for Hip Hop America: Hip Hop and the Molding of Black Generation X
- Speer Morgan for The Freshour Cylinders
- Gary Gach for What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop
- Chiori Santiago, author, Judith Lowry, illustrator, Home to Medicine Mountain
2000s
2000
2001
2002
Source:
- Aaron A. Abeyta, Colcha
- Susanne Antonetta, The Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir
- Rilla Askew, Fire in Beulah
- Tananarive Due, The Living Blood
- Gloria Frym, Homeless at Home
- Dana Gioia, Interrogations at Noon
- LeAnne Howe, Shell Shaker
- Alex Kuo, Lipstick and Other Stories
- Michael N. Nagler, Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future
- Donald Phelps, Reading the Funnies : Looking at Great Cartoonists Throughout the First Half of the 20th Century
- Al Young, The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems, 1990âÂÂ2000
- Jessel Miller, Angels in the Vineyards
- Lerone Bennett, Lifetime Achievement
- Jack Hirschman, Lifetime Achievement
2003
Source:
- Kevin Baker, Paradise Alley
- Debra Magpie Earling, Perma Red
- Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
- Rick Heide, ed., Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California
- Igor Krupnik, Willis Walunga, Vera Metcalf, and Lars Krutak, eds, Akuzilleput Igaqullghet, Our Words Put to Paper: Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History
- Alejandro MurguÃÂa, This War Called Love: Nine Stories
- Jack Newfield, The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania
- Joseph Papaleo, Italian Stories
- Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists
- Jewell Parker Rhodes, Douglass' Women, a novel
- Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey
- Velma Wallis, Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River
- Max Rodriguez, QBR: The Black Book Review
2004
Source:
- Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent, a novel
- David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards And Constitutional Freedoms In The War On Terrorism
- Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden, Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America
- Kristin Hunter Lattany, Breaking Away
- A. Robert Lee, Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions
- Diane Sher Lutovich, What I Stole
- Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation
- Renato Rosaldo, Prayer to Spider Woman / Rezo a la Mujer Arana
- Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties
- Michael Walsh, And All the Saints
2005
Source:
- Bernard W. Bell, The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots And Modern Literary Branches
- Cecelie Berry, Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood
- Jeff Chang, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
- Julie Chibbaro, Redemption
- Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror
- Alisha S. Drabek and Karen R. Adams, The Red Cedar of Afognak, A Driftwood Journey
- Ralph M. Flores, The Horse in the Kitchen: Stories of a Mexican-American Family
- Hiroshi Kashiwagi, Swimming in the American: A Memoir And Selected Writings
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
- Don Lee, Country of Origin, a novel
- Lamont B. Steptoe, A Long Movie of Shadows
- Don West, No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems, eds Jeff Biggers and George Brosi
- Journalism: Bill Berkowitz
2006
Source:
- MacKenzie Bezos, The Testing of Luther Albright, a novel
- Matt Briggs, Shoot the Buffalo
- David P. Diaz, The White Tortilla: Reflections of a Second-Generation Mexican-American
- Darryl Dickson-Carr, The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction
- Thomas Ferraro, Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America
- Tim Z. Hernandez, Skin Tax
- Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America
- P. Lewis, Nate
- Peter Metcalfe, Gumboot Determination: The Story of the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium
- Kevin J. Mullen, The Toughest Gang in Town: Police Stories from Old San Francisco
- Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin, eds., A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children
- Matthew Shenoda, Somewhere Else
- Carlton T. Spiller, Scalding Heart
- Chris Hamilton-Emery, Editor
- Jay Wright, Lifetime Achievement
2007
- Daniel Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads
- Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
- Rigoberto González, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
- Reyna Grande, Across a Hundred Mountains, a novel
- Ernestine Hayes, Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir
- Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans
- Gary Panter, Jimbo's Inferno
- Jeffrey F. L. Partridge, Beyond Literary Chinatown
- Judith Roche, Wisdom of the Body
- Kali VanBaale, The Space Between
2008
Source:
- Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem Being Young and Arab in America
- Douglas A. Blackmon, '
- Jonathan Curiel, Alâ America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots
- Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black. Anóoshi LingÃÂt AanàKá. Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804
- Maria Mazziotti Gillan, All That Lies Between Us
- Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968âÂÂ1998
- C. S. Giscombe, Prairie Style
- Angela Jackson, Where I Must Go, a novel
- L. Luis Lopez, Each Month I Sing
- Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America
- Fae Myenne Ng, Steer Toward Rock
- Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet
- Lorenzo Thomas, Don't Deny My Name: Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition, ed. Aldon Lynn Nielsen
- Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid
- J. J. Phillips, Lifetime Achievement
2009
- Houston A. Baker, Jr., Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Right Era
- Danit Brown, Ask for a Convertible
- Jericho Brown, Please
- José Antonio Burciaga, The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga, eds Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacón
- Claire Hope Cummings, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
- Stella Pope Duarte, If I Die in Juarez
- Linda Gregg, All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems
- Suheir Hammad, Breaking Poems
- Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder
- George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The A.A.C.M. and American Experimental Music
- Patricia Santana, Ghosts of El Grullo
- Jack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, ed. Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian
- Miguel AlgarÃÂn, Lifetime Achievement
2010s
2010
Source:
- Amiri Baraka, Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music
- Sherwin Bitsui, Flood Song
- Nancy Carnevale, A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890âÂÂ1945
- Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
- Sesshu Foster, World Ball Notebook
- Stephen D. Gutierrez, Live from Fresno y Los
- Victor LaValle, The Big Machine
- François Mandeville, This Is What They Say, translated by Ron Scollon from Chipewyan
- Bich Minh Nguyen, Short Girls
- Franklin Rosemont and Robin D. G. Kelley, eds., Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora
- Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson, eds., Poems for the Millennium: Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry
- Kathryn Waddell Takara, Pacific Raven: Hawai`i Poems
- Pamela Uschuk, Crazy Love: New Poems
- Katha Politt, Lifetime Achievement
- Quincy Troupe, Lifetime Achievement
2011
Source:
- Keith Gilyard, John Oliver Killens
- Akbar Ahmed, Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam
- Camille Dungy, Suck on the Marrow
- Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel
- William W. Cook and James Tatum, African American Writers and Classical Tradition
- Gerald Vizenor, Shrouds of White Earth
- Eric Gansworth, Extra Indians
- Ivan Argüelles, The Death of Stalin
- Geoffrey Alan Argent, ed., The Complete Plays of Jean Racine: Volume 1: The Fratricides, translated by Argent from French
- Neela Vaswani, You Have Given Me a Country
- Sasha Pimentel Chacón, Insides She Swallowed
- Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, eds., The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History of Culture in the United States
- Carmen Giménez Smith, Bring Down the Little Birds
- Luis Valdez, Lifetime Achievement
- John A. Williams, Lifetime Achievement
2012
Source:
- Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War
- Arlene Kim, What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes?
- Ed Bok Lee, Whorled
- Adilifu Nama, Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes
- Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
- Shann Ray, American Masculine
- Alice Rearden, translator; Ann Fienup-Riordan, ed., Qaluyaarmiuni Nunamtenek Qanemciput: Our Nelson Island Stories
- Touré, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now
- Amy Waldman, The Submission
- Mary Winegarden, The Translator's Sister
- Kevin Young, Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels
- Eugene B. Redmond, Lifetime Achievement
2013
Source:
- Will Alexander, Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture, Essay Press
- Jacob M. Appel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up, Cargo
- Philip P. Choy, San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide To Its History & Architecture, City Lights
- Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist, HarperCollins
- Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was An Aztec, Copper Canyon Press
- Louise Erdrich, The Round House, HarperCollins
- Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence, University of Chicago
- Judy Grahn, A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet, Aunt Lute Books
- Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave: A Memoir, W.W. Norton & Co.
- Demetria Martinez, The Block Captain's Daughter, University of Oklahoma Press
- Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Blood Songs, The Ecstatic Exchange
- dg nanouk okpik, Corpse Whale, University of Arizona Press
- Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI's War On Student Radical and Reagan's Rise to Power, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Christopher B. Teuton, Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liar's Club, University of North Carolina
- Lew Welch, Ring of Bone: Collected Poems, City Lights
- Ivan Argüelles, Lifetime Achievement
- Greil Marcus, Lifetime Achievement
- Floyd Salas, Lifetime Achievement
2014
Source:
- Andrew Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, Metropolitan Books
- Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire; The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, University of California Press
- Juan Delgado (poetry) and Thomas McGovern (photography), Vital Signs, Heyday Books
- Alex Espinoza, The Five Acts of Diego León, Random House
- Jonathan Scott Holloway, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940, University of North Carolina Press
- Joan Naviyuk Kane, Hyperboreal, University of Pittsburgh Press
- Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Tanya Olson, Boyishly, YesYes Books
- Sterling D. Plumpp, Home/Bass, Third World Press
- Emily Raboteau, Searching For Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Atlantic Monthly Press
- Jerome Rothenberg with Heriberto Yepez, Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader, Commonwealth Books
- Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, Metropolitan Books
- Margaret Wrinkle, Wash, Atlantic Monthly Press
- Koon Woon, Water Chasing Water, Kaya Press
- Armond White, Anti-Censorship Award
- Michael Parenti, Lifetime Achievement
2015
Source:
- Hisham Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Vintage)
- Arlene Biala, her beckoning hands (Word Poetry)
- Arthur Dong, Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1970 (DeepFocus Productions)
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press)
- Peter J. Harris, The Black Man of Happiness (Black Man of Happiness Project)
- Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books)
- Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon & Schuster)
- Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account (Pantheon)
- Manuel Luis Martinez, Los Duros (Floricanto Press)
- Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [gumaâÂÂ] (Omnidawn)
- Carlos Santana with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (Little, Brown and Company)
- Ira Sukrungruang, Southside Buddhist (University of Tampa Press)
- Astra Taylor, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Henry Holt)
- Anne Waldman, Lifetime Achievement
2016
Source:
- Laura Da', Tributaries (University of Arizona)
- Susan Muaddi Darraj, Curious Land: Stories from Home (University of Massachusetts)
- Deepa Iyer, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multicultural Future (The New Press)
- Mat Johnson, Loving Day (Spiegel & Grau)
- John Keene, Counternarratives (New Directions)
- William J. Maxwell, F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature (Princeton University)
- Lauret Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Counterpoint)
- Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Lawrence Hill Books)
- Jesús Salvador Treviño, Return to Arroyo Grande (Arte Público)
- Nick Turse, Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (Haymarket Books)
- Ray Young Bear, Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear (Open Road Integrated Media)
- Louise Meriwether, Lifetime Achievement
- Lyra Monteiro and Nancy Isenberg, Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award
- Chiitaanibah Johnson, Andrew Hope Award
2017
Source:
2018
Source:
2019
Source:
2020s
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
References