The National Book Award Has A DEI Problem

The acclaimed American author William Faulkner declared in 1950 that the writer’s duty was to write about the soul. “I believe that man will not merely endure, he will prevail,” Faulkner offered. “He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul … The writer’s duty is to write about these things.”

Faulkner took home the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature; in 1951, he became the second ever winner of the National Book Award for his collection of short stories; four years later, his novel “A Fable” won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. 

We used to live in a culture that revered great literature. As a society, we understood that the duty of our creative class was to capture the unique experience of being human in our immortal works of art. 

Sometime over the past several decades, however, our understanding of the function of literature shifted in the wrong direction — and our nation’s most prestigious literary prizes suffered as a result. Today, we no longer dole out prizes to books that probe the depths of the human soul; instead, we reward novels that tackle themes of race, gender, sexuality, and other supposed forms of “oppression” — and then call these books “art.” 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in this year’s National Book Award long-list. 

Every year, the National Book Foundation chooses 10 books to compete with one another for one of our nation’s most prestigious literary prizes. But this year’s picks all had something in common, and it’s not that they’re particularly insightful works of literature. Nine out of the 10 long-listed novels overtly tackle DEI themes. 

Don’t believe me? Even our friends at the New York Times admit it. Writing last week, opinion columnist Bret Stephens acknowledged that “there’s no mistaking the identitarian drift and ideological leanings in the prize’s elevation of the authors and their themes.”

I never thought I’d say this, but kudos to the New York Times. And if the Gray Lady is reporting on a DEI problem, then we definitely have a DEI problem on our hands. 

So what are this year’s long-list picks? Here are some official descriptions taken directly from publishers. 

Our first long-listed novel, “Mad Eden” by one Morgan Thomas of nonbinary convictions, follows “a trans telehealth worker” recently diagnosed with autism whose “safety comes under threat just as they’ve found happiness with their partner.” Another National Book Award pick, “Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You” by Julián Delgado Lopera, “dives into Colombia’s taboo queer culture” and features “a young man in Bogotá” who meets “a travesti, at a queer nightclub.” (According to Wikipedia, a “travesti” is a term “used to specifically designate people who were assigned male at birth and develop a feminine gender identity.”)

Edwidge Danticat’s “Dèy” explores “trauma, mourning and joy through [a] Haitian American lens,” and “Paradiso 17″ by Hannah Lillith Assadi is described as “the intimate, sweeping tale of one Palestinian man’s restless search for home” following the 1948 Nakba. I don’t know if our friend Dante would have approved of his great masterpiece being thus profaned. 

Another National Book Award long-lister, Marlon James’ “The Disappearers,” which the New York Times has called “the novel of the decade, if not the century,” follows “eight men in Kingston, Jamaica” who begin “rehearsals for a play.” These men “share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay.” Not just one of them, but all of them are gay!

When it comes to literature, I always like to give the benefit of the doubt. I am a big fan, for instance, of the literary works of Marxist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a writer whom Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro attacks in his most recent book, “Lions and Scavengers,” and frequently disparages on his show. I do not disagree with Shapiro’s critique of the philosopher in the least — Sartre has done irreversible damage to our conception of Western Civilization — but I do believe Sartre’s novels and short stories have a great deal of artistic merit as standalone works of literature.

All of that’s to say that terrible (or at least brainwashed) people can and often do produce great works of art. It is not fair, therefore, to dismiss the National Book Award long-list picks on the sole basis of their “woke” descriptions. It is fair, however, to read these books and realize they are neither exceptionally well-written nor particularly insightful.

Having read the opening chapters of all 10 of the National Book Award long-listers, I can tell you with absolute certainty that none of these novels were selected for their literary merit. 

Here, for instance, is an excerpt from James’ “The Disappearers”:

Penis. C*ck. Mine is not the only hand to have touched my c*ck. There have been five others, which given where I live and who I live with and what I have to live with, is d*mn well something. I already talked about that in this journal and I can’t think of any detail I left out. But this is an exercise, at least that is what I think it is. Watch, observe, report. This might as well be a report for social studies class back in grade school. Maybe I should talk about it like it’s somebody else’s c*ck. It’s darker than my palms but lighter than my face. I see shows on TV where every athlete is supposedly naked in the locker room, and can’t imagine me surviving that, especially since this is the first time I’m not being labeled one of the school f*gs. At the same time I wish I was at an American university to see boys walking around jiggling their American c*cks while they talk football scores.

I suppose we gain some insight into the human soul from the passage above: Marlon James really wants you to know about the size of his c*ck. 

Is our literary culture salvageable? You might not think so, but I am optimistic. If even the New York Times has begun to admit that the literary world has a DEI problem, then perhaps our mainstream institutions are finally waking up to the fact that literary agents, editors, and publishers alike promote ideology over literary merit. And awareness is always the first step toward change. 

The corporate world has already returned to normalcy following the decline of wokeness. Perhaps, one day, our literary institutions will wake up and follow suit. In the meantime, you can definitely skip the 2026 National Book Award nominees.

***

Liza Libes is a writer and the founder of Pens and Poison. She holds degrees in English from Columbia University and writes about literature and culture at pensandpoison.org. Follow her on X @pensandpoison.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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