'The Night Watchman,' Malcolm X biography win arts Pulitzers

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 on June 11 during a remote ceremony that honored 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 The Associated Press. "All of these voices are so important and always have been important."

Marcia Chatelain, whose "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America" won for history, said that she felt honored to be among a group of writers who have "tried to find a way to make clear that writing about race is fundamental to understanding what we need as a society."

Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, has drawn upon her background and blended the traditions of oral and written storytelling for such acclaimed novels as "The Round House" and "The Plague of Doves." She based "The Night Watchman" on the life of her maternal grandfather, a night watchman whose reservation in rural North Dakota was threatened in the 1950s by congressional legislation.

"This story belongs to him and to the Turtle Mountain people. It is very moving, this is very moving recognition," said Erdrich, who runs an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, where...