ROBERT F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ANNOUNCES 2010 BOOK AWARD WINNERS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Media Contacts:

Simone Greggs, greggs@rfkcenter.org
202.463.7575 ext 234

Claudia Stepke, cstepke@claudiastepkeassociates.com
646.296.7351

Washington, D.C. – The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is pleased to announce the selection of Ordinary Injustice by Amy Bach as the Winner of the 2010 RFK Book Award.  Dave Eggers has been awarded Distinguished Honor for Zeitoun.  The winning entries and finalists, Lift Every Voice by Patricia Sullivan, American Radical by D. D. Guttenplan and Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read by Beth Fertig, were chosen from nearly eighty submissions. 

In Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, Amy Bach details the everyday failings of the American justice system. Her well-researched and reported work argues that because those affected by the American justice system’s failures tend to be poor or minorities, these individuals are often overlooked, and because problems are so pervasive, they’ve become invisible to defenders, prosecutors and judges.

Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun focuses on Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans contractor and his Baptist-raised wife Kathy who survive Hurricane Katrina and its punishing aftermath only to run up against a harrowing demonstration of cultural complexity and abuse.  

"With Ordinary Injustice, Amy Bach, has given us a keenly insightful and profoundly disturbing exposition of the flawed and failing culture of the nation's administration of justice. Her detailed and documented account, enhanced by her own professional experience as a lawyer, presents a damning indictment of those within the system whose insensitivity, indifference and ignorance endanger the very ideal of justice under law,” said John Seigenthaler, chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Center Book Award. 

“Dave Eggers, the author of Zeitoun, has written the heart-wrenching narrative of a heroic Syrian-American Muslim, whose callous treatment by his government, after he sought to save lives during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reflects a blatant mockery of democratic values. Caught in the ironic trap of circumstances between two national tragedies--9-11 and Katrina--the family of Abdulrahman Zeitoun suffered abuse and derision (Zeitoun himself was jailed) as a result of the anti-Muslim paranoia that infected our government and too many Americans,” said Seigenthaler.  “These two works uniquely embrace themes close to the heart of Robert Kennedy during his public life.”

Seigenthaler, an acclaimed journalist, editor, publisher and former aide to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, chaired the distinguished panel of judges including:

Nikki Giovanni, a Grammy-nominated American poet, activist and author. Giovanni is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech;
 
Robert Schlesinger, columnist/op-ed writer for U.S. News and World Report and author of the book, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters; and, son of the late historian and RFK Book Award founder, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.;
 
Jean Halberstam is a former reporter and producer for PBS and reporter for The New York Times.  She is currently the Creative Director for the National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy and raises funds for Teach for America’s David Halberstam Fund which supports TFA in the Mississippi Delta where David’s professional career began.  She was married to the late journalist and author for thirty years; and, Curtis Wilkie is a former reporter for the Boston Globe, professor of writing at the University of Mississippi and the author of the book Dixie: A Personal Odyssey through Events that Shaped the Modern South.

The Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was founded in 1980 with the proceeds from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr’s best-selling biography, Robert F. Kennedy and His Times.  Each year the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights presents an award to the book, which in Schlesinger’s words, “most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy’s purposes-his concern for the poor and powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity.” The RFK Book Award has been acknowledged as one of the most prestigious honors an author can receive.  

Ethel Kennedy will present the awards to Bach and Eggers at a ceremony on Wednesday, May 26th in the Jack Morton Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington, DC.