Stories of race, racism and colonialism in the U.S. swept the Pulitzer Prizes for the arts, from Louise Erdrich’s novel “The Night Watchman” to a Malcolm X biography co-written by the late Les Payne to Katori Hall’s play “The Hot Wing King.”
The awards were announced Friday during a remote ceremony that honoured the best work in journalism and the arts in 2020, a year defined in part by the police killing of George Floyd and the protests and reckoning which followed. The news also comes amid an intensifying debate over race and education, with legislators in Texas and elsewhere seeking to restrict the teaching of racial injustice.
“What the Pulitzers are awarding this year seems so timely,” Tamara Payne, Les Payne’s daughter and the principal researcher for his book, told…
