Oscar Hijuelos

Hijuelos was born in New York City to Cuban immigrant parents, growing up in a Manhattan household where a childhood illness kept him hospitalized for over a year, separated from Spanish and his parents' native culture, an experience he later credited with shaping his lifelong themes of exile and belonging.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) follows two Cuban brothers, César and Nestor Castillo, chasing musical stardom in 1950s New York, their single unlikely brush with fame (a guest appearance on I Love Lucy) replayed as the high point of otherwise disappointing lives; it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, the first ever awarded to a Latino writer.

He went on to write several more novels of Cuban-American and immigrant life, including Mr. Ives' Christmas, and taught writing at Duke University until his sudden death from a heart attack in 2013.