Whitehead’s ‘Nickel Boys’ wins Pulitzer Prize

Jackson’s ‘A Strange Loop,’ wins for drama

NEW YORK, May 5, (AP): Colson Whitehead became the rare author to receive Pulitzers for consecutive books when his novel about a brutal Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era, “The Nickel Boys,” was awarded the fiction prize Monday. Three years ago, he won for his Civil War era novel “The Underground Railroad.”

Pulitzer judges praised “The Nickel Boys” as “a spare and devastating exploration of abuse” that is “ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.” Whitehead, 50, is known for his experimental narratives and immersion in American history and folklore. His previous works include “John Henry Days” and “The Intuitionist.”

In a statement issued through his publisher, Doubleday, Whitehead said the news of his winning Monday was “pretty nuts!”

“Obviously I’m very honored and I hope that it raises awareness of the real life model for the novel - The Dozier School for Boys - so that the victims and their stories are not forgotten,” he said.

William Faulkner and John Updike are among the previous fiction writers to win more than one Pulitzer, but not for books that immediately followed the other.

Honored

Several of the works honored in the arts Monday explored race in American culture, including the music winner, Anthony Davis’ opera “The Central Park Five.” It tells of the wrongful conviction of five black and Latino teenagers for the 1989 assault on a white female jogger in Central Park. Five adult singers depicted the group as boys and men in Davis’ opera.

The Pulitzer board called the opera “a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.”

Michael R. Jackson’s “A Strange Loop,” a musical about a man trying to write a musical, won for drama. Jackson, who wrote the music, story and lyrics, centers on an overweight, overwhelmed “ball of black confusion” trying to navigate multiple worlds - white, black and gay - as well as his family’s religion.

“No one cares about a writer who is struggling to write,” sings the anxietyridden lead character, Usher.