Author Description

This anthology includes 30 selections from a decade of award-winning fiction. Since 1976 the Before Columbus Foundation has been devoted to the task of redefining our notion of "mainstream" American literature to reflect this country's multicultural, multi-ethnic richness and diversity. Since 1980 it has sponsored the American Book Awards. For more than a decade, the Before Columbus Foundation has been giving annual book awards using a single criterion: no matter who wrote the book, it qualified as long as the judges considered it "an outstanding contribution to literature." The result has been an eclectic yet consistently meritorious selection, as this anthology of selections from prizewinners suggests. What a way to observe the Columbus quincentenary - not with one more cloned commemoration of "minority" literature or rear-guard defense of the European-American tradition, but with a collection whose authors (Toni Morrison, Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Salvatore La Puma, Leslie Silko, Milton Murayama, and more than 20 others) represent the true American mosaic. Included is a full list of American Book Award winners and their publications that will encourage readers to explore even further. From Library Journal. David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee.