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Book Award Spotlight 2021 PEN America Literary Award Finalists
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The death of Vivek Oji
by Akwaeke Emezi
In the wake of a southeastern Nigerian mother's discovery of her son's body on her doorstep, a family struggles to understand the enigmatic nature of a youth shaped by disorienting blackouts, diverse friendships and a cousin's worldly influence.
Finalist - PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Available on Overdrive, eReadIllinois, and in print
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Sharks in the time of saviors
by Kawai Strong Washburn
When a child falls overboard and is returned safely to his mother by a shark, his miraculous rescue is hailed as a sign from ancient Hawaiian gods, complicating his family’s troubles amid a collapsing sugarcane industry. A first novel.
Finalist - PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Award for Debut Novel
Available on Overdrive
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How to pronounce knife : stories
by Souvankham Thammavongsa
In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language. The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to build lives in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting. In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.
Finalist - PEN Open Book Award
Available on Overdrive
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A house is a body : stories
by Shruti Swamy
In this collection of stories, dreams collide with reality, modernity collides with antiquity, myth with true identity; women grapple with desire, with ego, with motherhood and mortality. The stories travel from India to America and back again to reveal the small moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.
Finalist - Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Available on Overdrive
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These ghosts are family : a novel
by Maisy Card
A man on his deathbed reveals that he stole another man’s identity decades earlier, traces the family’s history from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem and reconnects with the firstborn daughter he never knew. A first novel.
Finalist - Award for Debut Novel
Available on Overdrive and in print
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Luster
by Raven Leilani
A young black artist falls into an affair with a man in an open marriage before gradually befriending his wife and adopted daughter against a backdrop of dynamic racial politics. A first novel.
Finalist - Award for Debut Novel
Available on Overdrive, eReadIllinois, and in print
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Shuggie Bain : a novel
by Douglas Stuart
A young boy growing up in a rundown 1980s Glasgow public housing facility pursues some semblance of a normal life as his older siblings move on and his mother increasingly succumbs to alcoholism. A first novel.
Finalist - Award for Debut Novel
Available on Overdrive, eReadIllinois, and in print
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How much of these hills is gold
by C Pam Zhang
Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry and disparate goals. A first novel.
Finalist - Award for Debut Novel
Available on Overdrive, eReadIllinois, and in print
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That hair
by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
"The story of my curly hair," says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, "intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the indirect story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics." Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father. She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outsider from the jump. Through the lens of young Mila's indomitably curly hair, her story interweaves memories of childhood and adolescence, family lore spanning four generations, and present-day reflections on the internal and external tensions of a European and African identity. In layered, intricately constructed prose, That Hair enriches and deepens a global conversation, challenging in necessary ways our understanding of racism, feminism, and the double inheritance of colonialism, not yet fifty years removed from Angola's independence. It's the story of coming of age as a black woman in a nation at the edge of Europe that is also rapidly changing, of being considered an outsider in one's own country, and the impossibility of "returning" to a homeland one doesn't in fact know.
Finalist - PEN Translation Prize
Available on Overdrive
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Had I known : collected essays
by Barbara Ehrenreich
A selection of the best-selling writer and political activist’s most provocative signature writings includes her groundbreaking undercover investigations, op-ed pieces, essays and reviews, including the award-winning “Welcome to Cancerland.”
Finalist - Award for the Art of the Essay
Available in print
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The bird way : a new look at how birds talk, work, play, parent, and think
by Jennifer Ackerman
The best-selling author of The Genius of Birds draws on paradigm-changing scientific research into bird emotions and intelligence to explore advanced behaviors ranging from communicating and giving gifts to forming cooperative groups and dancing. Illustrations.
Finalist - Literary Science Writing Award
Available on Overdrive
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Fathoms : The World in the Whale
by Rebecca Giggs
Blending together natural history, philosophy and science, this stunning meditation on the extraordinary lives of whales takes readers on an exploration of the natural world to reveal what whales can teach us about ourselves, our planet and our relationship to other species. Illustrations.
Finalist - Literary Science Writing Award
Available in print
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The next great migration : the beauty and terror of life on the move
by Sonia Shah
Reveals how the refugee crises and unusual animal migrations of today’s world can be linked to historical migrations in earlier eras, explaining that migration should be recognized as an ancient and lifesaving biological response to environmental change.
Finalist - Literary Science Writing Award
Available on Overdrive and in print
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Owls of the eastern ice : a quest to find and save the world's largest owl
by Jonathan C. Slaght
A field conservationist tracks his five-year study of the elusive Blakiston’s fish owl of eastern Russia, where his small scientific monitoring team immersed themselves in local culture while learning about the species’ survival behaviors and shrinking habitat.
Finalist - Literary Science Writing Award
Available on Overdrive
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MBS : the rise to power of Mohammed Bin Salman
by Ben Hubbard
Examines the effect Mohammed bin Salman has had since his father King Salman took the throne in Saudia Arabia, using his influence to restructure the economy, confront enemies, and ease the strict Islamic social codes within the kingdom.
Finalist - Award for Biography
Available on Overdrive
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The yellow house
by Sarah M. Broom
A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East..
Finalist - Award for Nonfiction
Available on Overdrive, eReadIllinois, and in print
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Deported Americans : life after deportation to Mexico
by Beth C. Caldwell
Offers a critical look at the consequences of U.S. deportation policies through the experiences of Dreamers and their families who have been deported to Mexico in recent years, and proposes necessary legislative and judicial reforms.
Finalist - Award for Nonfiction
Available in print
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Hidden Valley Road : inside the mind of an American family
by Robert Kolker
Tells the heartrending story of a midcentury American family with 12 children, 6 of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. Illustrations.
Finalist - Award for Nonfiction
Available in print
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Caste : the origins of our discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
Identifies the qualifying characteristics of historical caste systems to reveal how a rigid hierarchy of human rankings, enforced by religious views, heritage and stigma, impacts everyday American lives.
Finalist - Award for Nonfiction
Available in print and on audiobook CD
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Visit https://pen.org/literary-awards/2021-pen-america-literary-awards-finalists for a full list of all finalists.
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