American Book Awards
The American Book Awards, established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation, recognizes outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. The purpose of the awards is to acknowledge the excellence and multicultural diversity of American writing.

2002

The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990 - 2000 by Al Young
Reading the Funnies: Looking at Great Cartoonists Throughout The First Half of the Twentieth Century by Donald Phelps
Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future by Michael N. Nagler
Lipstick and Other Stories by Alex Kuo
Shell Shaker by Lee Ann Howe
Interrogations at Noon by Dana Gioia
Homeless at Home by Gloria Frym
The Living Blood by Tananarive Due
Fire in Beulah by Rilla Askew
The Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir by Susanne Antonetta
Colcha by Aaron A. Abeyta


2001

Listening to Our Grandmothers' Stories; The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852-1949 by Amanda J. Cobb
Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation by Andrea Dworkin
When Living Was a Labor Camp by Diana García
Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems, 1969-1999 by Sandra M. Gilbert
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson
Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories by Russell Charles Leong
The Island of Lost Luggage by Janet McAdams
Bruised Hibiscus by Elizabeth Nunez
Killing Time with Strangers by W.S. Penn
Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir by Cheri Register
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire by Carolyne Wright


2000

From the Belly of My Beauty by Esther G. Belin
Sing When the Spirit Says Sing: Selected & New Poems 1960-1990 by Jon Eckels
Amok: Essays from an Asian American Perspective by Emil Guillermo
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by Elva Treviño Hart
It's Not Nostalgia: Poetry and Prose by Michael Lally
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
The Ice Workers Sings and Other Poems by Andrés Montoya
Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood, Kate Moses and Camille Peri, editors
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray
Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity by David A.J. Richards
Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford
Why She Left Us by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
The Trickster Shift: Humor and Irony in Contemporary Native Artby Allan J. Ryan
Year in Nam: A Native American Soldier's Story by Leroy TeCube
Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times by Helen Thomas
Exotica by David Toop
Heads by Harry (as part of a trilogy with Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers and Blu's Hanging) by Lois-Ann Yamanaka


1999

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
Right Here, Right Now by Trey Ellis
The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature, Lauro Flores (editor)
What Book!?:Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop, Gary Gach (editor)
Hip Hop America by Nelson George
The Last Paradise by James D. Houston
Ghost Dancing by Anna Linzer
Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yup'ik Eskimo Examplesby Jerry Lipka, with Gerald V. Mohatt and the Ciulistet Group
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
The Freshour Cylinders by Speer Morgan
The Men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Salvation and Other Disasters by Josip Novakovich
First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rimby Judith Roche and Meg McHutchison (editors)
Sometimes the Soul by Gioia Timpanelli
Survivor's Medicine by E. Donald Two-Rivers
Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life by Luis Alberto Urrea
Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations by Brian Ward


1998

On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions by Jim Barnes
Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez
Dog Road Woman by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis
Underworld by Don DeLillo
The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History by Scott DeVeaux
Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
All Saints by Brenda Marie Osbey
Love Like Gumbo by Nancy Rawles
Safari West by John A. Williams


1997

Et Tu...Raza by Alurista
The Post-Rapture Diner by Dorothy Barresi
Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Lifeby William M. Banks
Gospel Choirs by Derrick Bell
Maker of Saints by Thulani Davis
Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies by Tom De Haven
Imagine the Angels of Bread by Martin Espada
Dreams of the Centaur by Monserrat Fontes
The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century by Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Race Traitor by Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey
Women of the Beat Generation by Brenda Knight
Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of the Homelands by Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America by Sunaina Maira and Rajini Srikanth
Nightland by Louis Owens


1996

Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
The Physician of London by Stephanie Cowell
Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Longing by Maria Espinosa
The Tunnel by William Gass
The Unbearable Heart by Kimiko Hahn
Girl Hurt by E. J. Miller Laino
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
One by One from the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America by Glenn C. Loury
Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile by Agate Nesaule
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution, Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-han Ho, editors
Archipelago by Arthur Sze
Astoria by Robert Viscusi


1995

Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS by Thomas Avena
Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America by Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen
Face of an Angel by Denise Chavez
Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton
The Light People by Gordon Henry, Jr.
The Winged Seed: A Remembrance by Li-Young Lee
I Am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted, by Sandra Haldeman Martz
Green Fires: Assault on Eden: A Novel of the Ecuadorian Rainforest by Marnie Mueller
Banished Children of Eve by Peter Quinn
Rocking the Babies by Linda Raymond
Spidertown by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary Americaby Tricia Rose
Rebellion from the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chicago by John Ross
Crossing Ocean Parkway: Readings by an Italian American Daughterby Marianna De Marco Torgovnick


1994

Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, edited by Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman
Flood! A Novel in Pictures by Eric Drooker
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy
Daughters of Feminists by Rose Glickman
Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter by Janet Campbell Hale
Legends from Camp by Lawson Inada
In Search of Bernabé by Graciela Limón
Economic Empowerment Through the Church by Gregory J. Reed
Benedetta in Guysterland by Giose Rimanelli
A Different Mirror: A Muliticultural History of America by Ronald Takaki
Scenes from the Movie GIANT by Tino Villanueva
WOOD-HOOPOE Willie by Virginia Kroll, illustrated by Katherine Roundtree
Volunteered Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience by Jill Nelson


1993

Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation by Francisco X. Abarc¢u
The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curleyby Jack Beatty
Paris Connections: African-American Artists in Paris by Asake Bomani and Belvie Rooks
Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball by Nelson George
The Unquiet Earth by Denise Giardina
Claiming Breath by Diane Glancy
Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education by Gerald Graff
We Gave Away a Fortune: Stories of People Who Have Devoted Themselves and Their Wealth to Peace, Justice and the Environment by Christopher Mogil and Anne Slepian, with
Peter Woodrow
Neets'aii Gwiindaii: Living in the Chandalar Country by Katherine Peter
The History of Home by Leroy Quintana
The Eye in the Ceiling: Selected Poems by Eugene Redmond
Twice Blessed by Ninotchka Rosca
Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism: Volume I:Prophetic Thought in Post- Modern Times; Volume II: Prophetic Reflections: Notes on Race and Power in America by Cornel West


1992

Jessie and Jesus by Raymond Andrews
Cousin Claire by Raymond Andrews
Cebu by Peter Bacho
Black Thunder: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama by William B. Branch
Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Perry Bundles
Undocumented Love by José Antonio Burciaga
Belonging to the Universe by Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast with Thomas Capra
Hansberry's Drama: Commitment Amid Complexity by Steven Carter
In the Realm of a Dying Emperor by Norma Field
The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II by Stephen Fox
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature by Donna J. Haraway
A Dena'ina Legacy, K'tl'egh'i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky, edited by James Kari and Alan Boraas
The Last Fine Time by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Calendar of Dust by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Beyond Deserving by Sandra Scofield
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, I: My Father Bleeds History; II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Speigelman
To the American Indian: Reminscences of a Yurok Woman by Lucy Thompson (Che- ne-wah Weitch-ah-wah)
The Journey by Sheila Hamanaka
Voices of the Self: A Study of Language by Keith Gilyard


1991

Homesick: New & Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin
Terra Firma by Thomas Centolella
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes
Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory, edited by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn
In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo
Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics by bell hooks
Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile, edited by Deborah Keenan and Roseann Lloyd
Harvest Song by Meridel Le Sueur
Heroism in the New Black Poetry by D.H. Melhem
Overtime: Punchin' Out with the Mill Hunk Herald by The Mill Hunk Herald
The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes by R. Baxter Miller
Southern Front by Alejandro Murguia
Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam, edited by Charley Trujillo
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest by Karen Tei Tamashita
Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman
Black Robes, White Justice by Bruce Wright


1990

Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women by Paula Gunn Allen
Black Athena, Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilizations: Volume 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985 by Martin Bernal
Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry by Michelle T. Clinton, Sesshu Foster, and Naomi Quinonez
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives by James M. Freeman
Women on War (Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age) by Daniela Gioseffi
Vivar a Hostos by Jose Emilio Gonzalez
Italian Days by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Symbolic Immmortality: The Tlingit Potlatch of the 19th Centuryby Sergei Kan
People Who Led to My Plays by Adrienne Kennedy
The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's anthology, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mayumi Tsutakawa, and Margarita Donnelly
Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China by Hualing Nieh
Every Goodbye Ain't Gone: Family Portraits and Personal Escapadesby Itabari Njeri
The Light at the End of the Bog by John Norton
Romans and Blacks by Lloyd A. Thompson
The Harlem Fox, J. Raymond James and Tammany, 1920-1970 by John C. Walter
Hand into Stone by Elizabeth Woody


1989

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. by Frank Chin
Homemade Love by J. California Cooper
Columbia Literary History of the United States, edited by Emory Elliott
The Exiles of Erin: 19th Century Irish American Fiction by Charles Fanning
Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Cedric Belfrage
The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Right Thing to Do by Josephine Gattuso Hendin
Repairing America by William Hohri
Wode Shuofa (My Way of Speaking) by Carolyn Lau
A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde
Way by Leslie Scalapino
Stone's Throw by Jennifer Stone
Floating the River in Melancholy by Shuntaro Tanikawa, translated by William I. Eliot and Kazuo Kawamura (bilingual edition)
From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and Resistance by Askia Muhammed Toure
The Ultraviolet Sky by Alma Luz Villanueve


1988

Martin and Meditations on the South Valley by Jimmy Santiago Baca
The Long Shadow of Little Rock by Daisy Bates
Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thoughtby Allison Blakely
The Reckoning by David Halberstam
Songs of Gold Mountain by Marlon Horn
The Boys of Bensonhurst by Salvatore La Puma
Expounding the Doubtful Points by Wing Tek Lum
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Collected Poems of Charles Olson by Charles Olson, edited by George Butterick
Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Poems 1961-1985 by Edward Sanders
Tight Spaces by Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji & Egyirba High
Down and In by Ronald Sukenick
Griever: An American Monkey King in China by Gerald Vizenor
The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow by Opal Whiteley, presented by Benjamin Hoff


1987

SIN by Ai
Liberazione della Dona: Feminism in Italy by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum
Confessions of Madame Psyche by Dorothy Bryant
The Mixquiahuala Letters by Ana Castillo
Ready From Within by Septima Clark, edited by Cynthia Stokes Brown
Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker by Gary Giddins
Face Games by Juan Felipe Herrera
The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight
Practicing Angels, A Contemporary Anthology of San Francisco Bay Area Poetry, edited by Michael Mayo
Portrait of a Little Boy in Darkness by Daniel McGuire
Mama by Terry McMillan
American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
Selected Poems, 1958-1984 by John Wieners
Fools Crow by James Welch
Circumnavigations by Cyn Zarco


1986

Time's Now by Miguel Algarin
The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women, edited by Helen Barolini
A Daughter of the Nobility by Natasha Borovsky
Smiles on Washington Square by Raymond Federman
Seeing Through the Sun by Linda Hogan
My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe
I Hear You Knockin' by Jeff Hannusch (a.k.a. Almost Slim)
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
Yokohama, California by Toshio Mori
The Sun Is Not Merciful by Anna Lee Walters
Irish Musicians/American Friends by Terence Winch


1985

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Ground Work: Before the War by Robert Duncan
Love Medicine by Louise Erdich
Justice at War by Peter Irons
Solo in the Box Car, Third Floor E by Angela Jackson
Say Ray by Ron Jones
Queen of the Ebony Aisles by Colleen J. McElroy
Poets Behind Barbed Wire, edited and translated by Jiro Nakano and Kay Nakano
Round Valley Songs by William Oandasan
Amelia Earhart (AE) by Maureen Owen
Homegirls and Handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez
At Seventy: A Journal by May Sarton
Living Up the Street by Gary Soto
Genth's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown by Kohn Kuo Wei Tchen


1984

Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women by Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka
The Heat Bird by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Days Without Weather by Cecil Brown
Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets by Joseph Bruchac
A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches by Jesus Colon
O Albany by William Kennedy
The Mama Poems by Maurice Kenny
Naked in Deccan by Vankatesh Kulkarni
Praisesong for the Window by Paule Marshall
Pie-Biter, illustrated by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and You-shan
Tang, translated by Ellen Lai-shan Yeung
Echoes Inside the Labyrinth by Thomas McGrath
Citizen 13660 by Mine Okubo
The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Red Nachmanby Howard Schwartz
Axe Handles by Gary Snyder


1983

Not By the Sword by Nash Candelaria
Black Women Novelists by Barbara Christian
Queen of Wands by Judy Grahn
Lost Highway by Peter Guralnick
Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions by Jessica Hagedorn
Californians by James D. Houston
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
Chinese Folk Poetry by Cecilia Liang
An Duanaire by Sean O'Tuama and Thomas Kinsella
The Legend of Food Mountain by Harriet Rohmer
!Click Song by John A. Williams
Thirty An' Seen a Lot by Evangelina Vigil


1982

The Book of Jamaica by Russell Banks
Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Chickencoop Chinaman and Year of the Dragon by Frank Chin
Enclave by Tato Laviera
Collected Poems by E.L. Mayo
Songs for the Harvester of Dreams by Duane Niatum
This Passover or Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem by Hilton Obenzinger Sangre and Leroy Quintana
Pre-Faces & Other Writings by Jerome Rothenberg
Shino Suite by Ronald Tanaka
Marked by Fire by Joyce Carol Thomas
Bodies & Soul by Al Young
Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910- 1949, edited by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung


1981

Turn Again to Me & Other Poems by Helen Adams
On Call by Miguel Alarin
The Shameless Hussy by alta
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
Back Then Tomorrow by Peter Blue Cloud
The Choice by Rose Drachler
The Liberties by Susan Howe
In Time by Robert Kelly
Songs for Jadina by Alan Lau
Traveling Light by Lionel Mitchell
Felita by Nicholasa Mohr
A Scent of Apples by Ben Santos


1980

Tortuga by Rudolfo Anaya
Random Possession by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mouth on Paper by Jayne Cortez
Hello, La Jolla by Ed Dorn
All I'm Asking for is My Body by Milton Murayama
Ceremony by Leslie Silko
Snake-Back Solos by Quincy Troupe
Future Preconditional by Douglas Woolf

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