This week, The New Yorker will be announcing the longlists for the 2021 National Book Awards. So far, we’ve presented the lists for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, and Poetry. Check back tomorrow morning for Fiction.
Two titles on this year’s longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction observe the churn of the culture industry across American history. The New Yorker staff writer Louis Menand’s “The Free World,” which was excerpted in this magazine, constellates the personalities (Elvis, Norman Mailer), coteries (the Beats, the New Critics), and institutions (Black Mountain College, the federal government) that helped the U.S. become an exporter of culture during the Cold War. Hanif Abdurraqib’s “A Little Devil in America” is a lyrical celebration of Black artists, from Merry Clayton to Dave Chappelle, and a trenchant critique of the ways Black expression gets exploited.
The manufacturing of national narratives, particularly on the subject of race, is a common theme among contenders for the award. In “The Ground Breaking,” Scott Ellsworth argues that the Tulsa Race Massacre was purposefully wiped from the historical record—and offers a thoroughly researched corrective. Deborah Willis, the author of “The Black Civil War Soldier,” compiles photographs, letters, and personal materials to highlight the underlooked experiences of African Americans in the conflict. And “How the Word Is Passed,” by Clint Smith, tours nine sites, such as Louisiana’s Angola prison, Monticello, and lower Manhattan, that illuminate the history of slavery. The full list is below.
Hanif Abdurraqib, “A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance”
Random House / Penguin Random House
Lucas Bessire, “Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains”
Princeton University Press
Grace M. Cho, “Tastes Like War: A Memoir”
Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Scott Ellsworth, “The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice”
Dutton / Penguin Random House
Nicole Eustace, “Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America”
Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company
Heather McGhee, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together”
One World / Penguin Random House
Louis Menand, “The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War”
Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Tiya Miles, “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake”
Random House / Penguin Random House
Clint Smith, “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America”
Little, Brown and Company / Hachette Book Group
Deborah Willis, “The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship”
New York University Press
The judges for the category this year are Nell Painter, the author of “The History of White People” and the chairman of MacDowell’s board of directors; Eula Biss, the author of four books, most recently “Having and Being Had”; the essayist Aaron John Curtis, whose work has been published in The Selkie and by Lominy Books; Kate Tuttle, the editor of the Boston Globe’s books section; and Jerald Walker, a professor at Emerson College and the author of “How to Make a Slave and Other Essays.”
