James McBride on Race, Religion and Why He's Hopeful

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News, News Commentary, Society & Culture, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

James McBride is the National Award-winning author of The Good Lord Bird and the best-selling memoir, The Color of Water. His latest book is Deacon King Kong, which is set against the backdrop of 1960s Brooklyn and tells the story of how one man's decision upended an entire neighborhood. Sam talks to McBride about race, religion and community, the parallels he sees to the world we're living in today, and why he's still optimistic, despite protests and a pandemic.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here.
0:03.3	You are listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:06.7	So a question I have been asking myself a lot lately about all this new activism we're
0:12.4	seeing right now is whether it's authentic and whether it will last.
0:18.1	So I asked that question to my guest for this episode.
0:21.1	Racism has been our kill you see for a long time.
0:24.3	It's been the cancer that has just been killing us.
0:26.5	And now we want to address the problem.
0:28.5	I mean you can't address the cancer until you know you have it and these people are
0:32.7	seeing the cancer.
0:34.1	Now not all of them are going to come surgeons but a lot of them will, you know, enough that
0:39.9	the conversation will change.
0:42.0	That is the voice of the legendary author James McBride talking about race and our current
0:46.8	moment.
0:47.9	And throughout this episode you're going to hear James get very philosophical and very
0:52.2	direct about honestly all of 2020.
0:56.7	I called up James McBride because his work means a lot to me.
1:00.0	And I mean honestly not just to me, he is a big deal.
1:02.9	If you didn't already know his best selling memoir, The Color of Water, it was on the
1:06.7	New York Times bestseller list for two years.
1:10.3	He won the National Book Award for his book The Good Lord Bird and his book The Miracle
1:15.1	at St. Anna.
	...

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