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Curry named a recipient of the 2018 American Book Awards

This year, the Department of Philosophy’s Tommy Curry is one of the recipients of the thirty-ninth annual American Book Awards for his work, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood.

By: Allen M. Junek ‘18

Spanning ethnicity, creed, and genre, American literature is as diverse as it is expansive. To recognize this, the Before Columbus Foundation created the American Book Awards in 1979 to honor outstanding literary achievement from the diverse spectrum of America’s literary community.

This year, the Department of Philosophy’s Tommy Curry is one of the recipients of the thirty-ninth annual American Book Awards for his work, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood.

“I have always thought of many of the previous winners of the American Book Award as the intellectual radicals–those thinkers whose writings and creative works are well before their time. Winning the American Book Award was, and still is, incredibly humbling,” Curry said. “I will remain thankful and grateful for the recognition for years to come.”

In his book, Curry adjusts routine ways of thinking about patriarchy and racism. The Man-Not pushes disciplines to think beyond the finality of death as the only kind of oppression that black men endure. Before The Man-Not, there was not a unified theory explaining the relationship between the lethal violence directed towards black males and their sexual vulnerability. Now, there is, and it has given rise to a new field: black male studies.

“I wrote this book to challenge the way we think of black males,” Curry said. “We must transform how we are thinking about black men and boys, if we intend to have any true concept of black males’ humanity in what we now understand as gender theory.”

To see the official announcement from the Before Columbus Foundation, click here.