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American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. This should not be confused with the National Book Awards which...
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| x Year | x Award Winner | x Winning work | x Notes/Description | |||
| x name | x image | x article | ||||
| 1974 | Thomas Pynchon |
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Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist based in New York City and noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English...
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Gravity's Rainbow | ||
| 1980 | Douglas Hofstadter |
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Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, thinking and creativity. He is best known for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, first...
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid | ||
| 1980 | Leslie Marmon Silko |
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Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon on March 5, 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) to Leland Howard Marmon (a photographer) and Mary Virginia Leslie, is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second...
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Ceremony | ||
| 1980 | Rudolfo Anaya |
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Rudolfo Anaya (born October 30, 1937) is an American author. Best known for his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya is considered one of the founders of the canon of contemporary Chicano literature.
Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya was born in the rural village...
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Tortuga | ||
| 1980 | Douglas Woolf |
Douglas Woolf (March 23, 1922 - January 18, 1992) was an American author of short stories, novels and book reviews.
Woolf studied at Harvard University from 1939 until 1942. He also studied at the University of New Mexico, and the University of...
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Future preconditional | |||
| 1980 | Quincy Troupe |
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Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr., born July 22, 1943, in St Louis , Missouri, is a poet, editor (recently the Styx River Magazine and Black Renaissance Noire), journalist, and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla,...
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Snake-back solos | ||
| 1980 | Jayne Cortez |
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Jayne Cortez (born May 10, 1936 Fort Huachuca, Arizona) is an American poet, and performance artist.
She grew up in California. She is the author of ten books of poems and performer of her poetry with music on nine recordings. Her voice is...
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Mouth on paper | ||
| 1980 | Mei-mei Berssenbrugge |
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Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (born October 5, 1947 Beijing, China) is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Awards, her work is often associated with the Language School, the poetry of the New York School, phenomenology, and visual art. She is...
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Random possession | ||
| 1980 | Ed Dorn |
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Edward Merton Dorn (April 2, 1929 — December 10, 1999) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is Gunslinger.
Edward Merton Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois and grew up in rural...
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Hello, La Jolla | ||
| 1980 | Milton Murayama |
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Milton Murayama (born April 10, 1923, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii) is an American Nisei novelist and playwright. His first novel, All I Asking for Is My Body (1975) is considered a classic novel of the experiences of Japanese Americans in Hawaii before...
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All I Asking for Is My Body | ||
| 1981 | Nicholasa Mohr |
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Nicholasa Mohr (born November 1, 1938) is one of the best known Nuyorican writers. Her works tell of growing up in the Puerto Rican communities of the Bronx and El Barrio and of the difficulties Puerto Rican women face in the United States.
She was...
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Felita | ||
| 1981 | Robert Kelly | time of voice | ||||
| 1981 | Bienvenido Santos |
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Bienvenido N. Santos (1911-1996) is a Filipino-American fictionist, poet and nonfiction writer. He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years...
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Scent of apples | ||
| 1981 | Alta. | shameless hussy | ||||
| 1981 | Miguel Algarín |
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Miguel Algarín (September 11, 1941), is a Puerto Rican poet, writer, co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and retired Rutgers University professor of English.
Algarín was born in Puerto Rico and was educated and raised in culturally-minded...
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On call | ||
| 1981 | Helen Adam |
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Helen Adam (b. December 2, 1909 in Glasgow, Scotland — d. September 19, 1993 in New York City) was an American poet, collagist and photographer who was an active participant in The San Francisco Renaissance, a literary movement contemporaneous to...
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Turn again to me, and other poems | ||
| 1981 | Peter Blue Cloud | Back Then Tomorrow | ||||
| 1981 | Susan Howe |
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Susan Howe (10 June 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American poet and critic who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others. Her work has often been classified as Postmodern, and it expands traditional notions of genre ...
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The Liberties | ||
| 1981 | Toni Cade Bambara |
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Toni Cade Bambara (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995) was an American author, social activist, and college professor.
Bambara was born Miltona Mirkin Cade on March 25, 1939. She grew up in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. She attended schools in...
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The Salt Eaters | ||
| 1981 | Alan Chong Lau | Songs for Jadina | ||||
| 1981 | Lionel Mitchell |
Lionel Mitchell is a poet.
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Traveling Light | |||
| 1981 | Rose Drachler |
Rose Drachler is a poet.
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The Choice | |||
| 1982 | Lorna Dee Cervantes |
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Lorna Dee Cervantes (b. August 6, 1954, in San Francisco, California) is an award-winning Chicana-Native American poet who is considered one of the major Chicana poets of the past 40 years. She has been described by Alurista, as "probably the best...
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Emplumada | ||
| 1982 | Joyce Carol Thomas |
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Joyce Carol Thomas (born May 25, 1938) is an African-American playwright, author and illustrator of more than 50 children's books. She was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma and currently lives in Berkeley, California. She moved with her family in 1948 to...
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Marked by Fire | ||
| 1982 | Frank Chin |
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Frank Chin (趙健秀; pinyin: Zhào Jiànxiù) (born February 25, 1940) is an American author and playwright.
Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California, but was raised to the age of six by a retired Vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At six his...
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The chickencoop Chinaman ; and, The year of the dragon | ||
| 1982 | Tato Laviera |
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Tato Laviera (born 1951) is a Nuyorican poet, was born in Puerto Rico but moved to New York in 1960.
Laviera's poetry addresses language (and is written sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, more often in Spanglish), cultural identity, race,...
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Enclave | ||
| 1982 | Genny Lim | Island | ||||
| Judy Yung |
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Judy Yung (born 1946 San Francisco, California ) is professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in oral history, women's history, and Chinese American and Asian American history.
Yung received...
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| Him Mark Lai |
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Him Mark Lai (麥禮謙) (November 11, 1925 San Francisco - May 21, 2009) was an American historian. He was known as the “Dean of Chinese American History” by his academic peers, despite the fact that he was professionally trained as a mechanical...
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| 1982 | Jerome Rothenberg |
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Jerome Rothenberg (born 11 December 1931) is an internationally known American poet, translator and anthologist who is noted for his work in ethnopoetics and poetry performance.
Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New York City, the son of...
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Pre-faces & other writings | ||
| 1982 | Russell Banks |
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Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940 in Newton, Massachusetts) is an American writer of fiction and poetry.
Banks lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is presently also Artist-in-Residence at the University of...
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Book of Jamaica | ||
| 1982 | Hilton Obenzinger | This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem | ||||
| 1982 | Al Young |
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Al Young (May 31, 1939, Ocean Springs, Mississippi) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. On May 15, 2005 he was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In appointing Young as Poet...
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Bodies & soul | ||
| 1982 | Duane Niatum |
Duane Niatum (McGinniss) (born 1938 Seattle - ) is a poet, author and playwright.
After his parent's divorce, his Klallam grandfather became his surrogate father. After serving in the Navy, he graduated from the University of Washington, Johns...
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Songs for the Harvester of Dreams | |||
| 1982 | Leroy Quintana |
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Leroy Quintana is a poet.
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Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets | ||
| 1982 | E. L. Mayo |
Edward Leslie Mayo (b. July 26, 1904, Dorchester, Massachusetts - December 1979, Grinnell, Iowa) was an American poet.
He attended schools in Malden, Massachusetts, then Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
For three years thereafter he held...
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Collected Poems E L Mayo | |||
| 1982 | Ronald Phillip Tanaka |
Ronald Phillip Tanaka is a poet.
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The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry | |||
| 1983 | Joy Kogawa |
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Joy Nozomi Kogawa, CM, OBC (born June 6, 1935) is a Canadian poet and novelist of Japanese descent. Born Joy Nozomi Nakayama in Vancouver, British Columbia, she was sent to internment camps in the Slocan and Coaldale, Alberta during World War II....
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Obasan | ||
| 1983 | Nash Candelaria |
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Nash Candelaria (born 7 May 1928) is a Mexican American novelist. He is known for a tetralogy of novels about the Rafa family. He has been called the "historical novelist of the Hispanic people of New Mexico."
Candelaria was born in Los Angeles, but...
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Not by the sword | ||
| 1983 | Peter Guralnick |
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Peter Guralnick (born December 15, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American music critic, writer on music, and historian of US American popular music, who is also active as an author and screenwriter. He has been married for over 45 years to...
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Lost highway | ||
| 1983 | Seán Ó Tuama |
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Seán Ó Tuama (1926 Cork, Ireland – September 2006) was an Irish poet, playwright and academic.
Raised in Cork city and educated at the North Monastery (North Mon) school and University College Cork, Ó Tuama first came to prominence in 1950 with his...
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An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred | ||
| 1983 | Jessica Hagedorn |
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Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn was born (and raised) in Manila, Philippines in 1949. With her background, a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Filipino-Spanish father with one Chinese ancestor, Hagedorn adds a unique perspective to Asian American...
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Pet food & tropical apparitions | ||
| 1983 | John A. Williams |
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John Alfred Williams (born 5 December 1925) is an African American author, journalist and academic.
Williams was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and, after naval service in World War II, graduated in 1950 from Syracuse University. His novels, which...
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Click Song: A Novel | ||
| 1983 | James D. Houston |
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James Dudley Houston (November 10, 1933 – April 16, 2009) was an American novelist. He wrote nine novels in total.
Houston was born in San Francisco, where his parents had migrated from Quanah, Texas, a small town near the Oklahoma panhandle. Their...
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Californians: Searching for the Golden State | ||
| 1983 | Barbara Christian |
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Barbara Christian (b. Dec 12, 1943, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; d. June 25, 2000 Berkeley, California) was an author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and over 100 published...
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Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976 | ||
| 1983 | Judy Grahn |
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Judy Rae Grahn (born July 28, 1940, in Chicago) is an American poet. She has written many lesbian / feminist works.
Judy Grahn is a poet who writes about women's lives, including lesbian experience. She was a member of the Gay Women's Liberation...
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The Queen of Wands: Poetry | ||
| 1983 | Cecilia Liang | Chinese Folk Poetry | ||||
| 1983 | Evangelina Vigil |
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Evangelina Vigil is a poet.
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Thirty: An Seen a Lot | ||
| 1983 | Harriet Rohmer |
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Harriet Rohmer is a poet.
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Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento | ||
| 1984 | Paule Marshall |
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Paule Marshall (born April 9, 1929) is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Brooklyn College (1953) and Hunter College (1955). Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later...
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Praisesong for the Widow | ||
| 1984 | Joseph Bruchac |
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Joseph Bruchac (born 1942) is a writer of books relating to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a particular focus on northeastern Native American and Anglo-American lives and folklore. He has published works of poetry, novels, and short...
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Breaking Silence | ||
| 1984 | Thomas McGrath |
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Thomas Matthew McGrath, American poet, born November 20, 1916 near Sheldon, North Dakota, died September 20 1990, Minneapolis, Minnesota. McGrath grew up on a farm in Ransom County, North Dakota. He earned a B.A. from the University of North Dakota...
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Echoes inside the labyrinth | ||
| 1984 | Mei-mei Berssenbrugge |
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Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (born October 5, 1947 Beijing, China) is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Awards, her work is often associated with the Language School, the poetry of the New York School, phenomenology, and visual art. She is...
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The Heat Bird | ||
| 1984 | Maurice Kenney |
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Maurice Kenny is a Mohawk poet.
Maurice Kenny was born in Watertown, New York in 1929. His father is Mohawk from Canada, his mother was born in upstate New York. The family spent time living both on and off the nearby reservation.
Kenny's father was...
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The Mama Poems | ||
| 1984 | Gary Snyder |
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Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet (often associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance), as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist (frequently described as the "poet laureate of Deep...
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Axe handles | ||
| 1984 | Amiri Baraka |
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Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, (born October 7, 1934) is an American writer of poetry, drama, essays, and music criticism.
Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended Barringer High School. His father,...
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Anthology of African American Women | ||
| 1984 | William Kennedy |
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William Joseph Kennedy (born January 16, 1928) is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents...
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O Albany! | ||
| 1984 | You-shan Tang | Pie-Biter = Comepastels | ||||
| Ellen Lai-shan Yeung | ||||||
| Ruthanne McCunn |
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Ruthanne McCunn is a poet.
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| 1984 | Cecil Brown |
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Cecil Brown (September 14, 1907 in New Brighton, Pennsylvania – October 25, 1987) was the author of the book Suez to Singapore, which describes the sinking of HMS Repulse in December 1941. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6410...
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Days without weather | ||
| 1984 | Jesús Colón |
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Jesús Colón (1901-1974) born in Cayey, Puerto Rico is a Puerto Rican writer known as the Father of the Nuyorican Movement.
Colón was born after the Spanish-American War when the American Tobacco Company gained control of most of the tobacco...
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A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches | ||
| 1984 | Miné Okubo |
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Miné Okubo (first name pronounced MEE-NEH), a pioneering Nisei woman, artist and writer, created approximately 2000 drawings and sketches of her experiences while confined along with approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans in US internment camps...
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Citizen 13660 | ||
| 1984 | Mark Podwal |
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Mark Podwal (born June 8, 1945) is an artist, author and physician. He may be best known for his drawings on The New York Times OP-ED page. In addition, he is the author and illustrator of books for children as well as for adults. Most of these...
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The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman | ||
| Howard Schwartz |
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Howard Schwartz (born April 4, 1945 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a widely regarded folklorist, author, poet, and editor of dozens of books. He has won the international Koret Jewish Book Award, for the book Before You Were Born, and won the 2005...
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