Maxine Hong Kingston received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation earlier this month. The award has been presented to such renowned authors as Toni Morrison, Ray Bradbury and John Updike among others. The winners are chosen based on how their work has enriched American literature.
Sometimes a snappy book title does just what it’s meant to do: makes you chuckle and then open the cover. Most of us will read the book jacket and then decide whether or not the book has potential merit. I’m a sucker for a catchy title myself, so I jumped at the chance to investigate further Joe Bageant’s story of growing up in rural West Virginia, Deer Hunting With Jesus. The present election cycle once again brings to the forefront America’s cultural distinctions, and this book could not be more timely though published last year. Joe is a great storyteller, but the book is also informative in the vein of Nickel and Dimed and What’s the Matter with Kansas. I love what the publication "Mother Jones" had to say about the book: “Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder.” The great literary critic, Marshall McLuhan, suggested that you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a book and, if you like it, read it. This is what the author had to say about page 69 of his book: “Well, page 69 is one of the more low keyed pages in a rather gonzo book.” I would agree. The author recently achieved international fame when a Swiss-Italian TV station produced a 30-minute documentary titled, “Joe’s Winchester”. You can view the production on the author’s web page. Since Italian is my second language, I found it particularly enjoyable. However, even if you don't understand the language, the story is wonderfully told.
More Dayton Literary Peace Prize stuff for you folks. I decided to read one of the books nominated in the fiction category: Song For Night, by Chris Abani. Wow. Utterly blown away. Song For Night tells the story of My Luck, a 15-year-old boy soldier in Nigeria trying to find the rest of his unit after being separated from them by a land-mine explosion. My Luck's journey through the landscape of war and memory is a walk through a waking nightmare in which no emotion or sense is spared. What keeps this novella from being an utterly depressing read is the absolute beauty of Abani's writing. The man is a poet (really, he is), and with passages like this, it shows: "I dream my hate comes back and she is a woman made of night dancing in the middle of a lake I have seen only in Grandfather's stories and she has claws of fire and breath of ice and her laughter, as she turns in dance, is a band tight as a vice across my heart choking life from it, and as I am gasping for breath all I can think is, What a thing of beauty she is, what a thing." 
In case you were wondering, and you should be, the winners for the 2008 Dayton Literary Peace Prize were announced this week. The winner of the Fiction Prize is Junot Diaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and the Nonfiction Prize winner is Edwidge Danticat for Brother, I'm Dying. The Lifetime Achievement Award winner is Taylor Branch, notable for his Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, America in the King Years. According to Sharon Rab, chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, "This year’s winners explore both the devastating impact of violence and the power of the human spirit to overcome great pain and adversity in order to move communities and society forward. We are proud to honor artists whose creativity and unique perspectives remind us that lasting peace comes from our recognizing a shared humanity.” For more info about these authors and their prize-winning books, read the entire press release here.
