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- While We’re Waiting For The Movie Adaptation Of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”…
- What Do Readers Have To Say About Anisfield-Wolf Winners?
- VIDEO: Esi Edugyan: “I’ve Wanted To Be A Writer Since I Was 13″
- VIDEO: Toni Morrison Discusses “Black Is Beautiful”
- Does Toni Morrison’s Latest Stack Up Against Her Previous Works?
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Anisfield-Wolf Community Blog
While We’re Waiting For The Movie Adaptation Of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”…
...you can hear about Mohsin Hamid's role in getting the project to the big screen. Are you as excited for the adaptation as we are? Read More →
What Do Readers Have To Say About Anisfield-Wolf Winners?
We are celebrating 77 years of recognizing authors and works that contribute to the global dialogue around race and diversity. We've honored some of the greatest—from Toni Morrison to Langston Hughes to Isabel Wilkerson to Taylor Branch. With the redesign of our website, we've made it easier for you to find the books they were nominated for and to see what other works are in their catalog. And now, if you check out the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards page on Goodreads, you will be linked to hundreds of reviews of these works, to hear from other readers what we already know—that these books will move you, will inspire you and will drive you to action. Go ahead and browse through the titles and see what moves you. We think there's a trip to the library or bookstore in your immediate future... Read More →
VIDEO: Esi Edugyan: “I’ve Wanted To Be A Writer Since I Was 13″
Often writers feel that urge to put their thoughts out in the world as young children. 2012 Anisfield-Wolf winner Esi Edugyan felt the bug as a pre-teen after she drafted a piece of poetry that was so good, her mother insisted she must have copied it from a book. From then on, being a writer was an ultimate goal of a young Ms. Edugyan. Check out this short video presentation put together for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize and learn more about her thoughts on the writing process, whether she'll ever use social media to converse with fans, and how she feels when she completes a first draft. Read More →
VIDEO: Toni Morrison Discusses “Black Is Beautiful”
We've been talking about Toni Morrison a lot lately, but we think it's difficult to provide too much information on one of our greatest living writers. Bookriot named May 8 "Toni Morrison Day," in honor of the release of her newest book, but we're going to extend it one day and share one more video of the great Ms. Morrison. In it, she discusses the early part of her career and what she thought of the "Black is Beautiful" movement. Read More →
Does Toni Morrison’s Latest Stack Up Against Her Previous Works?
It's not very likely to hear us expressing doubt about Ms. Toni Morrison's literary abilities. If anything, our appreciation for her craft only grows larger with the release of each new work. Her latest novel, Home, explores the homecoming of Frank Money, a Korean War vet who signed up for the service to get away from his hometown, only to return weary and disturbed and not sure of how welcome he will be. The reviews are in—is this still the Toni Morrison we all know and love?
New York Daily News:
Toni Morrison’s new novel “Home” is a slim volume. That alone excuses it from providing the sweeping exhilaration of “Beloved” or “Song of Solomon.” But “Home” is also a lesser novel — still powerful, still moving, but not her best work.
San Francisco... Read More →
VIDEO: Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sheds Light In “Finding Your Roots”
Watch John Lewis and Cory Booker on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.
It's so often repeated that it has lost most of its meaning, but the old saying is true: "You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been." Anisfield-Wolf jury chair Skip Gates' latest PBS show, "Finding Your Roots" takes it one step further by connecting the past and the future. In the video above, he assists Newark mayor Cory Booker and Sen. John Lewis (1999 nonfiction winner) in exploring their past. Check out the video and let us know - what questions do you have about your past? What would you hope researchers could find out about your family? Read More →
Toni Morrison On Herself: “The Only Thing I Do For Me Is Writing”
In anticipation for Toni Morrison's latest novel, Home, following the story of a Korean War veteran and his return to America in the 1950s, New York magazine wrote one of the best pieces on Toni Morrison that we've ever read. In it, writer Boris Kachka examine her feelings on her pen name (Surprise! She hates it), whether she believes her writing is as good as other people say it is (she does) and much, much more. We've lifted some of the best excerpts and encourage you to read the full piece. It's extraordinary:
On whether she deserves to be listed among the all-time greats, regardless of skin color:
But two decades after she won her Nobel, Toni Morrison’s place in the pantheon is hardly assured. A writer of smaller ambitions would live on contentedly in this plush... Read More →
VIDEO: Wole Soyinka, 2012 Lifetime Achievement Winner
We’ll be spending this week exploring the lives and works of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Award winners. Today we're recognizing Wole Soyinka, 2012 Lifetime Achievement winner. Apart from his extensive literary career, he has also been incredibly politically active, speaking out and risking his life to protest the corrupt governmental regimes in Nigeria. In 1967, he was arrested and put in solitary confinement for 22 months for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring Nigerian and Biafran parties in his homeland. He kept writing during this time, finding a way to create ink in his cell and using tissue paper to collect his poetry. In the video above, documentary filmmaker Akin Omotoso takes viewers on a journey to understand the man behind the headlines and awards... Read More →
VIDEO: David Livingstone Smith On Why Humans Demean Other Humans
"This book is the first serious study of the phenomenon of dehumanization," David Livingstone Smith says in this recent interview on his book, Less Than Human. "No one has really looked into what goes on when human beings think of other groups of human beings as sub-human creatures."
Check out the full interview to see how dehumanization has contributed to global crises like the Holocaust and global wars. Visit his website at RealHumanNature.com. Read More →
5 Things To Know About Esi Edugyan, 2012 Winner For Fiction
We’ll be spending this week exploring the lives and works of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Award winners. Today we're recognizing Esi Edugyan, who won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Half-Blood Blues.
She counts Leo Tolstoy and Alice Munro among her favorite writers of all time: "Tolstoy has given me the most, year after year, without fail. I return to him for his scope, his sense of human destiny, the vastness of his vision. Alice Munro, for the precision of her writing, the sharp corners she can turn between sentences. There are many others – dozens and dozens! – of course."
If she wasn't a writer, she'd still be doing something creative: "I honestly don't know. On those days when you're having problems and dreaming of greener pastures, you know, you think about it…I... Read More →
