Novelist Colson Whitehead became the recipient of a second consecutive Pulitzer Prize on Monday when his book The Nickel Boys won the high-profile award for fiction. 

The novel, about the cruelties suffered at a boys reform school during the Jim Crow era, is one of a series of works that take a fictional look at the very real historical issues of racism and its impact on individuals.

Whitehead, 50, won a 2017 Pulitzer for his previous book The Underground Railroad. He said through a statement from his publisher, Doubleday, that he wanted the inspiration for The Nickel Boys to be remembered.

"Obviously I’m very honored and I hope that it raises awareness of the real life model for the novel — The Dozier School for Boys — so that the victims and their stories are not forgotten," he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Whitehead joins famed fiction writers William Faulkner and John Updike who have won more than one Pulitzer but neither of them won for books that have followed one another.

Among other Pulitzer winners that focused on race was The New York Times’ groundbreaking work "The 1619 Project," which analyzed the first Africans to step onto American soil under enslavement. Journalist Nikole Hannah Jones won a prize for commentary on the project.

Jericho Brown took a prize for poetry for his collection The Tradition. The drama pulitzer went to Michael R. Jackson for the performance piece A Strange Loop. W. Caleb McDaniel took the history prize for Sweet Taste of Liberty, the story of a 19th century woman who survived an ordeal of kidnapping and re-enslavement to sue her captor.

Also, a prize for music was awarded to composer Anthony Davis for his production of The Central Park Five, an operatic version of the story of five New York Black and Latino teenagers who were falsely convicted of a brutal 1989 sexual assault, and eventually exonerated.