Good Lord Bird (McBride)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 11, 1957
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.A., Columbia University
• Awards—National Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York City and Lambertville, New Jersey.


James McBride, an American writer and musician, was raised in Brooklyn's Red Hook housing projects. His father, the Rev. Andrew D. McBride (1911–1957), was African-American and his mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska (1921–2010), was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. McBride was the last child Ruth had from her first marriage, and the eighth of 12 children in all.

I'm proud of my Jewish history,...Technically I guess you could say I'm Jewish since my mother was Jewish...but she converted (to Christianity). So the question is for theologians to answer.... I just get up in the morning happy to be living.

Two of his older brothers, Dennis and Billy, graduated with doctorates in medicine, but medicine had no appeal for James. Instead, he attended Oberlin College and received an undergraduate degree in music composition, followed by a Master's in journalism from Columbia University.

Journalism
As a journalist, he was on the staffs of many well-known publications, including Boston Globe, Washington Post, Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, and People. He has also written for Rolling Stone, Us, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence, New York Times, and others. Mr. McBride is a charter member of the Clint Harding Network, a group of well-known journalists, writers and musicians who periodically have appeared live on a Missouri radio program for the last two decades.

Author
McBride is best known for his 1996 memoir, the bestselling The Color of Water, which describes his life growing up in a large, poor African American family led by a white, religious, and strict Jewish mother, whose father was an Orthodox rabbi, but converted and became devoutly Christian during her first marriage to Andrew McBride.

The memoir spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and has become an American classic. It is read in high schools and universities across America, has been translated into 16 languages, and sold more than 2.5 million copies.

In 2002, he published a novel, Miracle at St. Anna, drawing on the history of the overwhelmingly African American 92nd Infantry Division in the Italian campaign from mid-1944 to April 1945. The book was adapted into the movie Miracle at St. Anna, directed by Spike Lee, released in 2008.

McBride's 2008 novel, Song Yet Sung, is about an enslaved woman who has dreams about the future, and a wide array of freed black people, enslaved people, and whites whose lives come together in the odyssey that surrounds the last weeks of this woman's life. Harriet Tubman served as an inspiration for the book, and it provides a fictional depiction of a code of communication that enslaved people used to help runaways attain freedom. The book, based on real-life events that occurred on Maryland's Eastern Shore, also featured the notorious criminal Patty Cannon as a villain.

In 2012 McBride co-wrote and co-produced the film Red Hook Summer with Spike Lee, and in  2014 he published The Good Lord Bird, a comic novel recounting the life of notorious abolitionist John Brown. It won the National Book Award.

Musician
McBride is the tenor saxophonist for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of best selling authors—Mitch Albom Dave Barry, Amy Tam, Scott Turow, to name a few—who are lousy musicians. "Hopefully," according to McBride, "the group has retired for good." However in 2013, along with the with the rest of the group, he co-authored Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Bank Ever (of Authors) Tells All.

He has also toured as a saxophonist with jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott and has his own band that plays an eclectic blend of music. He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Pura Fé, and Gary Burton.

In 2005, he published the first volume of The Process, a CD-based documentary about life as lived by low-profile jazz musicians.

McBride composed the theme music for the Clint Harding Network, Jonathan Demme's New Orlean's Documentary, Right to Return, and Ed Shockley's Off-Broadway musical Bobos.

McBride was awarded the 1997 American Music Festival’s Stephen Sondheim Award, the 1996 American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award, and the 1996 ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award.

Personal
McBride is currently a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University. He has three children and lives between New York City and Lambertville, New Jersey. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/7/2014.)