American · 1951–2013
Oscar Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1990 for "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love"—the first Hispanic writer to receive the honor. The novel follows two Cuban musician brothers in 1950s New York, their one night on "I Love Lucy," and their long decline. Hijuelos grew up in a Cuban family in Manhattan; his fiction preserves a world of Latin music and immigrant longing. He died in 2013.