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The National Book Foundation announced the list of nominees for the 2022 National Book Award and a biography of the late George Floyd was among the contesters for nonfiction a little over two years after his murder.
George Floyd was killed in May 2020 when Derek Chauvin—a former Minneapolis police officer—pinned Floyd's neck with his knee for more than nine minutes while the 46-year-old Black man repeatedly said he couldn't breathe. His death sparked global protests and debates about racial injustice and police brutality.
And now, a recent biography of Floyd is among the list of nominees for the National Book Award.
His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice was written by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. The book was released on May 17 of this year, only eight days before the second anniversary of his death.
Upon the book's release, Olorunnipa said that watching the video of his death, which was taken by a bystander and went viral in 2020 and aided in Chauvin's conviction, was even more difficult after researching and writing so much about his life.
"It was hard to watch someone that we had learned about in interviews and in different ways and through their own writings and through the research that we had done about his American experience. To watch him die, even though we knew the end of the story when we first started this research, it was tough. It was emotional. It was painful to see," said Olorunnipa according to Fox9.
He added, "And that's what we hope people when they pick up the book, feel the same way. When they understand more about George Floyd's life, the things that they saw on the video will make more sense."
Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in April last year and sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison.
His Name is George Floyd is among a list of ten nonfiction contestants, including John A. Farrell's Ted Kennedy: A Life, Natalie Hodges' Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time, and David Quammen's Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus.
In the fiction category, When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar, The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones and The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Storiesby Jamil Jan Kochai are among those nominated. In poetry, Jay Hopler's Still Life, Sherry Shenoda's Mummy Eaters and The Rupture Tense by Jenny Xie are in the running.
The National Book Foundation will name five finalists from each category on October 4, and winners will be announced during the awards ceremony on November 16.
Newsweek reached out to the National Book Foundation for additional comment.
About the writer
Emma Mayer is a Newsweek Culture Writer based in Wyoming. Her focus is reporting on celebrities, books, movies, and music. ... Read more