Inspired by an op-ed from poet and memoirist Javier Zamora, a group of authors is urging the Pulitzer Prizes to consider works by non-U.S. citizens.
Zamora, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Solito, wrote an essay for De Los, the Latine-focused section of the Los Angeles Times, noting that the Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, biography, memoir, poetry and general nonfiction are only open to books written by American citizens.
“It makes no good sense that seemingly liberal organizations like the Pulitzer Foundation that frequently celebrate writers and artists whose works expose injustice, would simultaneously be perpetuating the kind of exclusionary xenophobia immigrants experience daily,” Zamora wrote.
The project Undocupoets, which Zamora co-founded in 2015, published an open letter to the Pulitzers urging them to change their citizenship policy. As of Wednesday afternoon, it had been signed by scores of authors, including Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Sandra Cisneros, Angie Cruz, Hua Hsu, Valeria Luiselli, Ann Napolitano, and Bryan Washington.
“We, the undersigned, believe that we have a duty to ask what constitutes the literature of a nation, and in asking this question, we believe it is essential to veer away from the definitions the State provides as to what it thinks constitutes U.S. selfhood,” the letter reads in part. “Whether undocumented writers are writing about the border or not, their voices are quintessentially part of what it means to belong and struggle to belong in this and to this nation.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
