I’m Doug Doyle with The Art of the Story from the WBGO archive. This time we go back to October 15th 2003 when a very special guest joined WBGO's Gary Walker, award winning author and musician James McBride…….
GW:
It’s wonderful to have you here. I had a number of emails from people saying, I’m going to be at work. I’m gonna be at work. Are you gonna put that and archive it on the website? And we will do that, you know.
DD:
James McBride was the eighth of 12 children. His mother was Jewish, his father was Black. In 1995 James wrote the story of his childhood in his book, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. It sold a million and a half copies and stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for two years.
JM:
When I was a kid, one time I asked my brother David whether we were black or white.
And David said “You want to see somethin? Come here.”
And he took me upstairs, and he opened the closet door and he said “Look in there.” And I looked in there and he shoved me inside and closed the door behind me.
And I said “Let me out!”
And then someone behind me went “Raarrr!” and my other brother was in there hiding. And scarin me to death
GW:
Writing the book was a release for you..
JM:
A catharsis. Partly because when I was 28 y o, I realized I didn’t know who I was. And I couldn’t figure out who I was until I knew who my mother was. And I didn’t know anything about my mother’s history. I knew my mother was white. But in my community we were all pretty much poor or lower middle class so it wasn’t as much of an issue as people might make it out to be. It’s like here at WBGO where you’re located, you’re in downtown Newark but white people walk down the street all the time and nothin happens to them. They just go to work so although I knew my mother was white, I really had no idea that she was Jewish and I had no idea the complexity and depth of her history. So when I investigated it, I found out that she had quite a history.
GW:
And this book leapfrogs back and forth btwn your childhood and growing up and your mother’s childhood growing up. And she was at first not a ready and willing participant. She was “go away, I’d rather watch Dallas.”
JM:
So what I did, I reported around her. I would go down to Suffolk, VA, where she grew up and interview people (I had been a reporter for the Washington Post and the Boston Globe) so I knew what a reporter does, so I reported around her and then I would bounce facts off of her, so then it became like a catharsis for her after awhile.
DD:
James McBride’s latest book — The Heaven + Earth Grocery Store — was named a Must Read for the Summer by The New York Times, and a winner of the National Book Award. That's the Art of the Story from the WBGO Archive, thanks to to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and WBGO Archive Director Becca Pulliam.
