Ada Ferrer and James Ijames are two of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize 2021 announced on Monday, May 9, 2022.
The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, and online journalism, literature, and musical composition held annually in the United States. It was established by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, and is administered by Columbia University. The prize, founded in 1917, is worth US$15,000 to winners in each of the categories awarded. Previous winners include William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead as well as Marcia Chatelain and Les Payne and Tamara Payne.
The winners for 2022 were announced on Monday with the following writers of African descent winning in their category;
Drama
- Fat Ham, James Ijames
The play “Fat Ham,” a comedic riff on “Hamlet” set at a Southern barbecue, hasn’t even had an in-person production yet because of the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, based on its script and following a streaming production mounted last year by the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia.
Read Ijames’ chat with the New York Times by clicking here.
History
- Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer (Scribner)
“Ada Ferrer, a leading historian of Cuba, provides a succinct yet wide-ranging history of U.S.-Cuba relations from the point of view of the island and its inhabitants,” said Pulitzer Board member Tommie Shelby, a professor at Harvard University. “It is full of memorable vignettes, beginning with the fact that Christopher Columbus made landfall on the island and not on the North American continent, as is usually assumed. The themes of anti-Black racism, slavery and slave rebellion, imperialism, revolution, the Cold War, land and labor exploitation, and the quest for national self-determination are all seamlessly integrated into a compelling, fast-moving, and vivid narrative.”
Ferrer simply tweeted; “SPEECHLESS!”
Ada Ferrer is a Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean History at New York University.
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