Jefferson, Not Hemings, Inspiration for Top Book Award: It would be easy to assume that a desire to document an enslaved woman’s rightful place in history started Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed down the path that led to her recent triumph as the winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction. But it is a fascination with Thomas Jefferson himself, not Sally Hemings or the bonds between them, that has captivated this scholar and writer since her childhood.
Gordon-Reed, who is a history professor at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., as well as a professor of law at New York Law School, became the first African-American woman to win the National Book Awards’ nonfiction prize for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. She is also the first Black author to win the nonfiction prize since 1991 when Orlando Patterson won for Freedom. Other African-Americans have won in other categories.
Her book examines the lives of Sally, her siblings and her children born and reared at Monticello and owned by Jefferson.
