Events › Tacoma Reads: James McBride in Conversation with Mayor Woodards

Friday, Nov. 1, 2024

Doors at 4:30 p.m., event at 5 p.m.

UW Tacoma - William W. Philip Hall

1918 S. C St.

Order of program:

• Introductions from UW Tacoma Library and Tacoma Public Library 
• James McBride and Mayor Woodards in conversation
• Audience Q&A with James McBride
• Book signing 

Tacoma Reads 2024 invites the community to explore the theme of Rhythms of Resilience through reading common titles and attending themed events for all ages.

Join Tacoma Public Library and host City of Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards for a conversation with National Book Award & bestselling author James McBride, whose novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is the main title for Tacoma Reads 2024.

Registration opens two weeks prior to the event on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024 at 8 a.m.

About the book:

Named a Must Read for the Summer by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Time, AARP, Town & Country, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

About the author: 

James McBride is an award-winning author, musician, and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, published in 1996, has sold millions of copies and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Considered an American classic, it is read in schools and universities across the United States.

His debut novel, Miracle at St. Anna, was turned into a 2008 film by Oscar-winning writer and director Spike Lee, with a script written by McBride.

His 2013 novel, The Good Lord Bird, about American abolitionist John Brown, won the National Book Award for Fiction and will be a Showtime limited series in fall 2020 starring Ethan Hawke.

McBride has been a staff writer for The Boston Globe, People Magazine, and The Washington Post, and his work has appeared in Essence, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. His 2007 National Geographic story “Hip Hop Planet” is considered an important examination of African American music and culture.

A noted musician and composer, McBride has toured as a saxophonist sideman with jazz legend Jimmy Scott, among other musicians. He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Pura Fé, Gary Burton, and even for the PBS television character “Barney.” (He did not write the “I Love You” song for Barney, but he wishes he did.) He received the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award for his musical Bobos, co-written with playwright Ed Shockley. His 2003 Riffin’ and Pontificatin’ musical tour was filmed for a nationally televised Comcast documentary. He has been featured on national radio and television in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. He often does his public readings accompanied by a band.

In addition to being an author and a musician, McBride has other attributes. He admits to being the worst dancer in the history of African Americana, bar none (he claims he should be legally barred from dancing at any event he attends). And when he takes off his hat, fleas fly out. Little things, little talents.

A native New Yorker and a graduate of New York City public schools, McBride studied composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and received his master’s degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. In 2015, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America.” He holds several honorary doctorates and is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Learn more at jamesmcbride.com

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Tacoma Reads is a city-wide reading program that seeks to unite the community in dialogue around contemporary themes through reading selected books and attending engaging programs. A longstanding partnership between the City of Tacoma’s Mayor’s Office and the Tacoma Public Library, Tacoma Reads is made possible through wide community support and collaboration.

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Sponsors: University of Washington Tacoma Library

Bookseller partners: King's Books, Parable