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Pulitzer Prize Honors Works on Race and Gender

by MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Writer , April 21, 2009

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NEW YORK

Gordon-Reed
Stories of race and gender prevailed at this year's Pulitzer Prizes, with "Ruined," Lynn Nottage's harrowing tale of survival set against the backdrop of an African civil war, winning for drama Monday. Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed's "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family" won for history.

In a rare victory for the short story, Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge," a collection set in New England and linked by the forthright title character, a math teacher and general scold with an understanding heart. It was the first book of short stories to win since 2000 (Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies").

Three prize winners centered on racial history, from colonial times to the 20th century.

The general nonfiction award went to "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon, Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham won the biography prize for "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House," a best-seller about the populist president whose sympathy for the less fortunate never extended to slaves.

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