“The Red Hook Houses were not like the Cause Houses, but the same love was there,” he says. McBride grew up in a housing project in Red Hook, Brooklyn, but as he notes, it would be a mistake to simply trace the Cause Houses back to his own project experiences. A lot of mixing other races and not just white/black, but the mixing of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and Haitians.” and that dynamic involves a lot of love and a lot of respect for each other,” he says. “There is a dynamic that exists within the lifestyle of this neighborhood. For McBride, humanizing the projects was an intentional move. The Cause Houses breathe, communicate, hurt and laugh. The buildings are the body, and the characters’ experiences are the organs and organisms that bring it to life. The book features a large set of characters, but the Cause Houses emerge as the central protagonist, taking an almost human form. McBride uses his sharp pen and incredible wit to explore the inner lives and interconnections of a diverse cast of characters who either live in or engage with the Cause Houses and nearby Five Ends Baptist Church. “Courage, modesty and morality are still the spine that holds America together.”ĭeacon King Kong centers on the fallout after an elderly, grief-stricken Baptist church deacon named Sportcoat shoots a young former baseball player-turned-drug dealer named Deems at the Cause Houses housing project in 1969. I felt creatively free to do what I wanted to do. I’ve already demonstrated that I can write to the satisfaction of my peers and colleagues on the business side. “I never thought I’d win a National Book Award, you know,” he says.

Following up a major award winner would cause anxiety in some, but not for McBride. McBride’s third novel, 2013’s The Good Lord Bird, won the National Book Award in fiction. Following a short story collection and a well-received biography of James Brown, Deacon King Kong marks McBride’s return to the novel. Since then, he’s worked in multiple genres and formats to explore race, love, loss and the basic human threads that unite us all. He first captured our hearts and minds with his 1995 memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. James McBride is one of America’s foremost storytellers, a contemporary urban griot whose works offer nuanced portrayals of America’s complex cultural landscape.

Deacon king kong james mcbride