My guest today, James McBride, grew up in Brooklyn, the eighth of 12 kids, really immersed

in community church music and books.

Eventually heading off to school, he would find himself at Columbia Journalism School,

and then in the career as a journalist for the better part of a decade, working for places

like the Boston Globe, People, and the Washington Post, before leaving journalism behind

to turn music into a full-time profession, where he would then spend the better part of

the next decade touring and playing sacks with jazz legend Jimmy Scott and so many others,

and also writing songs for people like Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., and even for

the PBS television character Barney.

But here's the thing, while he was on the road, he kept writing, and he kept looking back

at his life, and especially his mom's life with curiosity, and that would eventually become

his landmark memoir, The Color of Water, that sat on the New York Times bestseller list

for two years, and led him back into a more blended career writing and playing music.

The color of water is now considered an American classic, and has read in schools and universities

across the United States, his debut novel Miracle at St. Anna, was translated into a major

motion picture directed by Spike Lee, and his novel The Good Lord Bird, really about

the American Revolutionary John Brown, won the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction,

and McBride's newest novel, Deakin King Kong, it drops you into this sort of fictional

world of church and community set in 1969 Brooklyn, which is rich with these incredible stories,

deeply flawed yet lovable characters, and this fierce interplay between social commentary

and humor that ultimately lands in the form of awakening and redemption and love. We explore

all of this, along with his lens on the interplay between music and writing and life and teaching,

...