Ta-Nehisi Coates' book "Between the World and Me" won the U.S. National Book Award for nonfiction category while Adam Johnson's "Fortune Smiles" won the award for the fiction category.
The book tells the "blunt exploration of his experience of being a black man in America." It was published summer of last year, during the time where race relations and equality were the subject of a national dialogue. It is of the modern masterpieces that has been gain such a wide following.
Coates dedicated his award to Prince Jones, a friend of his who was killed by 15 years ago due to mistaken identity. Unfortunately, the office who called the shots was never punished. Jones' tragedy is also being tackled deeply in the book "Between the World and Me."
During his emotional acceptance speech, Coates said, "Every day you turn on the TV and see some kind of violence being directed at black people. Over and over and over again. And it keeps happening." According to CTV News, the speech was a "stirring expression of gratitude and frustration."
"I'm a black man in America," Coates said. "What I do have the power to say is that you won't enrol me in this lie. You won't make me a part of it."
Other awardee included Neal Shusterman's "Challenger Deep" which won the young people's literature prize and Robin Coste Lewis' "Voyage of the Sable Venus" which was cited for poetry. Don DeLillo also received a lifetime achievement medal for his contributions to literature while James Patterson was honored for his advocacy of reading and literacy.
In DeLillo's speech, he talked about books and old friends. He said: "Here are the shelves with the old paperbacks, books still in their native skin. And when I visit the room I'm not the writer who has just been snaking his way through some sentences on a sheet of paper, curled into an old typewriter. That's the guy who lives down the hall. Here, I'm not the writer at all. I'm the grateful reader."
All winners received $10,000. Furthermore, the works of Johnson, Coates and Lewis were published by Penguin Random House.
