 | |
| Author | Robert Samuels Toluse Olorunnipa |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | George Floyd |
| Published | 17 May 2022 |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Pages | 432 |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction |
| ISBN | 978-0-593-49061-7 |
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice is a 2022 biography about George Floyd written by Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. [1] [2]
The book uses the life of George Floyd and his murder by police officer Derek Chauvin as a lens through which to examine racism in the United States. It draws from interviews with Floyd's friends and family and members of his local community. Floyd's ancestors are discussed—they worked as tenant farmers during the Reconstruction era. Aspects of Floyd's life such as his parenting, drug addiction and convictions are covered. Race-related commentary about education housing segregation, incarceration, police brutality and terrorism in the United States is connected to the life of Floyd. [3]
His Name is George Floyd was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction with the following citation: "An intimate, riveting portrait of an ordinary man whose fatal encounter with police officers in 2020 sparked an international movement for social change, but whose humanity and complicated personal story were unknown." [4]
The book was also a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Nonfiction, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. Several organizations named it one of the top books of 2022, including TIME and Kirkus Reviews.[ citation needed ]
Kehinde Andrews of The Guardian praised the book's coverage of Floyd, saying that it "does not paint him as a saint but explains his flaws in the context of his experiences". Andrews approved of the authors' "valiant effort to use Floyd's story to educate society about the ills of structural racism", but suggested that they could have focused on a subject such as Breonna Taylor to draw attention to the lesser covered oppression of Black women in the United States. [3]
In The Atlantic , Imbolo Mbue similarly praised the authors "for presenting Floyd as the complex character that he was". Mbue recommended the book as "expertly researched" and "a necessary and enlightening read", highlighting in particular passages that celebrate African American culture and "depict how much Floyd was loved and how much he loved back". However, Mbue criticized that the book could have "more pointedly" highlighted the "hypocrisy of governments and corporations and all manners of institutions" that showed support for the Black Lives Matter movements out of ulterior motives. [5]
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year.
John Tracy Kidder is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has received praise and awards for other works, including his biography of Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist, titled Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003).
George Packer is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of the US from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His award-winning biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, was released in May 2019. His latest book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal was released in June 2021.
The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality.
Jay Anthony Lukas was an American journalist and author, best known for his 1985 book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. Common Ground is a classic study of race relations, class conflict, and school busing in Boston, Massachusetts, as seen through the eyes of three families: one upper-middle-class white, one working-class white, and one working-class African-American.
Thomas M. French is an American writer and journalist.
David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, The Danish Girl, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, The 19th Wife, was adapted into a television movie of the same name in 2010.
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a 2007 nonfiction book by the American music critic Alex Ross, first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It recounts the history of European and American music, starting in 1900, and highlights many examples. According to Grove Music Online, the book was intended to "open musical discourse to the broader educated public".
T. J. Stiles is an American biographer who lives in Berkeley, California. His book The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt won a National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. His book Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Behold the Dreamers is a 2016 debut novel by Imbolo Mbue. The novel details the experiences of two New York City families during the 2008 financial crisis: an immigrant family from Cameroon, the Jonga family, and their wealthy employers, the Edwards family.
Clinton Smith III is an American writer, poet and scholar. He is the author of the number one New York Times Best Seller, How the Word Is Passed, which won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the top ten books of 2021 by the New York Times. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Counting Descent, which was published in 2016 and Above Ground, which was published in March 2023.
Kehinde Nkosi Andrews is a British academic and author specialising in Black Studies.
Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, author, Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism, and professor of journalism.
Toluse "Tolu" Olorunnipa (Toe-Loo Oh-lo-roo-NEE-pa; is a Nigerian-American journalist and political commentator. He is the first reporter of native African and Nigerian descent to cover the White House. Of Yoruba heritage, Olorunnipa was named the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post in July 2022.
George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, on May 25, 2020. Derek Chauvin, one of the four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds which caused a lack of oxygen. After his murder, protests against police brutality, especially towards black people, quickly spread across the United States and globally. His dying words, "I can't breathe", became a rallying slogan.
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X is a biography of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne. The book was published in late 2020 by Liveright in hardcover format while an audiobook, narrated by actor Dion Graham, was simultaneously released by Recorded Books. Among other honors, the book won the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
The 2021 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded by the Pulitzer Prize Board for work during the 2020 calendar year on June 11, 2021. The awards highlighted coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial unrest, and other major stories in the U.S. that year. Several publications, including The Atlantic and BuzzFeed News, received their first Pulitzers.
Darnella Frazier is an American woman who recorded the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, posting her video on Facebook and Instagram. The video undermined the initial account of Floyd's death by the Minneapolis Police Department, and served as evidence leading to criminal charges against four police officers. Frazier testified during the trial, which ended with the conviction of Derek Chauvin on murder charges. She received a special award and citation from the Pulitzer Prize board in 2021.
Alison Flowers is an American journalist who investigates violence, police conduct and justice. She was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting in 2021 for her work on the podcast Somebody, which tells the story of Shapearl Wells, mother of Courtney Copeland who was killed outside a Chicago police station in 2016. She won an Emmy for her work on the SHOWTIME documentary 16 Shots and is the author of Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence and Identity, a portrait of four exonerated criminals.
Robert Samuels is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker.