James Mcbride By James Mcbride Analysis

is the bestselling memoir of James McBride, a biracial journalist, jazz saxophonist, and composer whose Jewish mother gave birth to twelve children, all of whom she raised in a housing project in Brooklyn. His mother witnessed the premature death of her first husband, a reverend, and through sheer force of will saw each of her children graduate from college. Her basic household tenets rested on the importance of academic success and the church, and many of her children moved on to earn graduate and professional degrees.

McBride grew up in the Red Hook housing projects of Brooklyn confused by his mother's "whiteness". His confusion about his own racial identity later became the wellspring from which he pursued an understanding of his mother's