![]() ![]() The award for nonfiction went to Masha Gessen for “ The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which chronicles the return of authoritarianism under Vladimir V. “They said, ‘Why should I read about a 13-year-old poor black boy or his neglectful, drug-addicted mother?’” she said. ![]() In her acceptance speech, she noted that occasionally in her career, she has faced skepticism from people who doubted that there was a commercial audience for fiction about poor black Southerners. Ward, a Mississippi native who received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation this year, is now a two-time National Book Award winner: She previously won the fiction award in 2011 for her novel “Salvage the Bones.” The judges called the book “a narrative so beautifully taut and heartbreakingly eloquent that it stops the breath.” The novel, which critics compared to works by William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, features a 13-year-old boy named Jojo, whose drug-addicted mother takes him and his toddler sister on a road trip to pick up their white father when he is released from prison. Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday night for “ Sing, Unburied, Sing,” a dark, fablelike family epic set in contemporary Mississippi that grapples with race, poverty and the psychic scars of past violence. ![]()
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