Three stories with narratives centered on race won the Pulitzer prize this week, including Lynn Nottage's play 'Ruined,' a piece about African women who survived the brutal civil war in Congo.

Her prize-winning play is set in a Congolese brothel. The story's main characters include a madam named Mama Nadi and several young women who work for her.

"I wanted to depict the modern Africa in all its complexity, and to show the beauty and humor and what keeps people there going," Nottage told the New York Daily News. "I hope it will raise awareness about the issues that the play raises. The war ended in 2002, but the conflict and violence against women continues."

Nottage is from Brooklyn, and her previous works were about black women in New York, including a turn-of-the-century seamstress in 'Intimate Apparel' and a riches-to-rags public relations executive in 'Fabulation.'

Annette Gordon-Reed (pictured right) also won a Pulitzer for 'The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,' a book about a slave girl whom many believe had an affair with Thomas Jefferson.

White author Douglas A. Blackmon took home the Pulitzer for general nonfiction for his book 'Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.' Source