World Literary Awards

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American Book Awards あめりかんぶっくあわーど

Edition 10 (1989)

Literary awardMulticultural literatureNo genre restrictions (novels, poetry, non-fiction, etc.)

Winners

16 people

A novel by Alma Luz Villanueva in which women’s relationships, desire, and family pressure overlap. Against a vivid sense of color and light, it follows the inner changes of its characters as a novel of transformation.

Women’s relationships and desire shift under a bright, intense sky of color.

379 pages
novelwomen’s relationshipsfamilydesireLatina literature

A poetry collection that turns Black liberation and resistance into sharp, urgent verse.

Poems of genocide, memory, and resistance.

77 pages
poetryBlack liberationresistanceAfrican American literature
Audre Lorde Winner

An early, distinctive poetry collection by a Chinese American poet.

It stretches the form of self-expression in bold ways.

poetryChinese Americanself-expressionexperimental writing

A large-scale literary history and anthology surveying US literature.

It organizes American literature on a comprehensive scale.

1263 pages
literary historyanthologyAmerican literaturecriticism

An epic work that traces Latin American history from mythic origins to colonization.

A chain of history that begins with creation myths.

336 pages
historyLatin Americaepic prosememory

A short story collection set in the Chinese American community of Oakland.

It captures urban Chinese American experience.

224 pages
short storiesChinese Americanurban lifecommunity
Frank Chin Winner

A critical work that rereads Black literature through oral tradition.

A foundational work in African American literary theory.

318 pages
literary criticismBlack literatureoralitytheory

A magical-realist novel about Eva Luna, a girl who grows into a gifted storyteller.

She moves through the world by the power of storytelling.

novelmagical realismLatin Americafemale protagonist

A short story collection about love, labor, and resilience among Black women.

It turns daily pain and affection into stories.

192 pages
short storiesBlack womenlovecommunity

A Black feminist essay collection facing illness and politics head-on.

Cancer, activism, and personal politics intersect.

essaysfeminismillnesspolitics

An essay collection that moves between daily life and politics.

Personal experience meets social critique.

essaysmemoirfeminismpolitics

A New York novel centered on the father-daughter bond in an Italian immigrant family.

It traces immigrant family tensions and responsibility.

211 pages
novelimmigrationfamilyNew York

An experimental long poem that keeps widening what experience can hold.

Fragments and repetition reassemble perception.

148 pages
poetryexperimental writinglanguagebody
Shuntarō Tanikawa たにかわ しゅんたろう Winner

A bilingual Japanese-English poetry volume by Shuntaro Tanikawa.

Tanikawa's poems in parallel translation.

152 pages
poetrytranslationJapanese literaturebilingual edition

An anthology of nineteenth-century Irish-American fiction.

It gathers an early layer of immigrant literature.

300 pages
anthologyimmigrant literatureIrish American19th century

A short story collection about love, labor, and resilience among Black women.

It turns daily pain and affection into stories.

192 pages
short storiesBlack womenlovecommunity