UofM’s Hooks Institute Announces 2022 Hooks National Book Award Finalists
Aug. 4, 2023 — The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis has selected the following finalists for the 2022 Hooks National Book Award:
- Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream by Tiffanie Drayton (Viking/Penguin Random House)
- Bertha Maxwell-Roddy: A Modern-Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership by Dr. Sonya Y. Ramsey (University of Florida Press)
- Progressive Prosecution: Race and Reform in Criminal Justice by Kim Taylor-Thompson and Anthony C. Thompson (New York University Press)
- The Third Reconstruction by Dr. Peniel E Joseph (Basic Books)
- Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement by Thomas E. Ricks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
About the Hooks National Book Award
The Hooks Institute’s National Book Award is presented to a non-fiction book published in the calendar year that best furthers understanding of the American civil rights movement and its legacy.
Finalists were chosen from 45 books that were nominated for the 2022 award. The award winner will be chosen this summer by a panel of judges representing various disciplines and academic institutions in Memphis. The book award winner will speak at an event hosted by the Hooks Institute.
“The nominees for the Hooks National Book Award are an exciting group filled with individual and collective stories that capture the courage and sacrifice of well-known and newly recovered figures vital to the ongoing fight for equal rights,” said Dr. Terrence Tucker, Department Chair, University of Memphis Department of English and Hooks Book Award Chair. “These works push audiences to view the Civil Rights Movement as part of a continuum in the fight for emancipation and the dream of a multi-racial democracy that has appeared at certain points in the American experiment.
“Our finalists cover issues of leadership, democracy and criminal justice as central tenets of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th and 21st century. They treat history as a collaborative endeavor, and their works act as the opening of a conversation. The urgent, incisive and accessible prose makes clear that the unfinished mission can, and must, be accomplished by ordinary citizens performing the extraordinary work of shaping the course of human history.”
Hooks National Book Award Committee
The Hooks Institute extends its gratitude to the 2022 Hooks National Book Award committee. In addition to Tucker, it includes Dr. Beverly Cross, Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Urban Education at the UofM; Dr. Aram Goudsouzian, UofM professor of History; Dr. Charles McKinney, associate professor of History at Rhodes College; Dr. Ladrica Menson-Furr, assistant dean of the UofM College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor of English and director of African and African American Studies; and Dr. Ladonna Young, Educational Consultant and former Hooks Institute Board Member.
For more information, visit memphis.edu/benhooks/programs/book-award.php.
About the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change
The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute implements its mission of teaching, studying and promoting civil rights and social change through research, education and direct intervention programs. Institute programs include community outreach; funding faculty research initiatives on community issues; implementing community service projects; hosting conferences, symposiums and lectures; and promoting local and national scholarship on civil and human rights. The Hooks Institute is an interdisciplinary center at the University of Memphis. Contributed revenue for the Hooks Institute, including funding from individuals, corporations and foundations, is administered through the University of Memphis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization.