Celebrated author, musician, and screenwriter James McBride, speaks directly to our primary audience -- people in prison -- about moving past regret in life, finding freedom in books, claiming power in knowledge. He also offers a micro-lesson on the varying ways to tell a story -- from his piano bench. McBride is the author of a number of celebrated books, including The Good Lord Bird, which won the National Book Award for Fiction and was adapted into a limited series on Showtime starring Ethan Hawke. His other books include Deacon King Kong, Miracle at St. Anna, and The Color of Water. 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.
[00:00:00] Reginald Dwayne Betts: There's somebody in like, you know, Sydney, Australia right now with a book in their hand, who's thinking about the world along the same lines of the conversation that we're having.
[00:00:12] Jason Reynolds: It's literally us manipulating and maneuvering 26 letters into different arrangements that might just liberate somebody.
[00:00:21] Miriam Toews: Literacy is, is freedom.
[00:00:25] Betts: And so, so many people was yelling, you know, and it was wild to me. I was like, this is literature right here. Y'know what I mean? I was like, I was like, this is the importance of books.
You're listening to The Freedom Takes, a podcast from the Million Book Project. I'm your host Reginald Dwayne Betts. I'm a poet, a lawyer, and the founder and director of the Million Books Project.
[00:00:47] Elsa Hardy: And I'm Elsa Hardy. I'm a PhD student in African American studies at Harvard, and a law student at Yale. I work with Dwayne on the Million Book Project.
[00:00:55] Betts: On this show, we talk to the authors of books we are sending to readers in prisons across this country.
We talk to them about their creative work, what inspires them, and what it means to be free. Mr. McBride is the author of The Color of Water, Miracle at St. Anna, Deacon King Kong, and the National Book Award winner in The Good Lord Bird. But it is a true pleasure to have you here today with us.
[00:01:18] James McBride: Well, I'm delighted to be here, Dwayne.
You go by Dwayne, right?
[00:01:22] Betts: Yeah. That's--I just be tryna confuse people by saying my first name is Reginald, and then they be like, "Well, wait a minute, who's Reginald? Who's Dwayne?" So if somebody is looking for me, they can get a little confused. Y'know?
[00:01:31] McBride: Well that's okay, I understand. If somebody's looking for you, just don't tell 'em you know me. That'd be, that'd be fine with me.
Um, yeah, well, uh, nice to be here. And, uh, you know. So this is a good project, and it speaks to, you know, a community that I care about a lot and, you know, we're involved in the struggle to be-- to be free, and to free so many people who need to be free. So, um, I'm glad that you, you know, that you found me out. So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
[00:02:04] Betts: Yeah.
[00:02:05] Hardy: So, Mr. McBride. To get us started here, could you introduce The Good Lord Bird for our readers and, um, maybe read a little bit from it?
[00:02:13] McBride: Um, yeah. Okay. Well, I gotta get a book first, hang on a sec.
[00:02:18] Hardy: [chuckles]
[00:02:29] McBride: Uh, The Good Lord Bird is about, um, it's about the white abolitionist, John Brown, who in 1859 attacked the Harper's Ferry Aresenal, which was, uh, where America stored all of its, uh, weapons-- made its weapons, and stored most of its rifles, about a hundred thousand rifles. He attacked with 19 men, um, with the help of his, uh, his daughters and, uh, and his daughters- in- law.
And, uh, he actually succeeded in attacking the arsenal, taking it over for almost three days. And actually, John Brown would have gotten away if he had not waited for the quote unquote Negroes to hive. He was convinced that blacks would find out about the insurrection that he, uh, that he put together an hive to the, to Harper's Ferry and join him, but he made a bunch of tactical mistakes which cost him and, and most of his, uh-- most of the 19 men with him-- cost them their lives. Uh, he was hung along with five or six others. The others were killed during the, during the, the fight. A couple got away. Anyway, I became fascinated with the story, and wanted to create a story that, that people would read to the end.
And so, um, you know, I figured out a way to do it. I created this character named Onion: Henry Shackleford, who claims to be the only surviving member of the John Brown, and so he tells this whopper of a story to someone in his church in, like, the 1940s, and that person kept a diary of it and that person died. And when the church burned down, somebody found the diaries. And so this, The Good Lord Bird is really a di- the diary of an old man telling his life story. All right? You know, it's a whopper, you know, so, you know, it's meant to be funny, but tragically so. Um, and that's it. So you, you said, you sure you want me to read from it?
[00:04:21] Betts: Yeah. It main- it mainly, just to give you a little bit of context, it's like, you know, I served eight and a half years in prison, and I never got a chance to meet the author. I've read all of these books. I didn't even know writers, like, read from their books publicly and you create the voices of characters in your head, but it's, it's great to hear from 'em.
And so we're trying to create the experience that, you know-- you spend 5, 10, 15, 20 years in prison-- you literally never get a chance to have this moment. And so for a lot of people, including some people who sent us questions, they read The Good Lord Bird, and it'd just be one of those true honors to- to hear it in your voice. But also, when they hear it in your voice they will recognize, oh, that's 350 pages, but that sounds good. I could pick that up and read it. And so this is us trying to create a kind of gateway experience for people who truly, otherwise, like, just wouldn't get the chance to hear you.
[00:05:09] McBride: Yeah, okay. All right. Well, I'm delighted to do that. And, uh, I, uh, it hurts my heart to hear you talk about, uh, so many, so many men-- especially some of these young men who have been in prison, and some who are not young, who have been there-- you know, it's hard to think about, I have a lot of, you know, several friends who, you know, who didn't make out so well.
Um, so, you know, uh, well this is for all of those who are in prison, and who, uh, who are not free in your, in your, physically, but in your mind and in your heart, no one can take away your intelligence. No one can take away your spirit and the things that God or Allah, whoever you worship, has given you, including works like this.
And then when I was in Robin Island, and I saw when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, uh, I was inspired--not so much by the physicality of the place, but by the spirit of the men with whom he spent a good 27 years of his life. And most of what they did was they read books and they talked about them. And they could tell you anything they could, they could, they could quote Goethe and they could quote, you know, Malcolm X and, and, uh, you know, Nietzsche. They read all the time, and reading was their freedom.
Anyway, I'm getting, I'm- I'm getting uh, I'm going on a little tangent here. We're running against the clock. So I'm going to just start reading. They don't need to hear me preach, they can get that themselves.
[00:06:41] Betts: I don't know, they might need to hear you preach too, but we- we take the reading and the preaching.
[00:06:45] McBride: Well, I'm going to begin at the very beginning.
I'll skip the prelude, I mean, the- the forward. The forward simply sets up the story. This story is written in the first person. This is an old man talking. This is Onion--Henry Shackleford--telling his story to a friend of his at, uh, some Baptist church in Wilmington, Delaware. And so this is kind of reads, it reads kind of like a diary.
Uh, chapter one is entitled "Meet the Lord".
I was born a colored man, and don't you forget it, but I lived as a colored woman for 17 years. My Pa was a full-blooded Negro out of Osawatomie, in Kansas territory, north of Fort Scott, near Lawrence. Pa was a barber by trade though that never gived him full satisfaction.
Preaching the gospel was his main line. Pa didn't have a regular church, like the type that don't allow nothing but bingo on Wednesday nights, and women sitting around making paper doll cutouts. He saved souls one at a time, cutting hair at Dutch Henry's Tavern, which was tucked at a crossing on the California Trail, that runs along the Kaw River in South Kansas territory.
Pa ministered mostly to lowlifes, four-flushers, slaveholders, and drunks who came along the Kansas trail.
He weren't a big man in size, but he dressed big. He favored a top hat, pants that drawed up around his ankles, high collar shirt, and heeled boots. Most of his clothing was junkie-found, or items he stole off dead white folks on the prairie, killed off from dropsy, or aired out on account of some dispute or other.
His shirt had bullet holes in it the size of quarters, his hat was two sizes too small, and his trousers come from two different colored pairs, sewn together in the middle where the arse met. His hair was nappy enough to strike a match on. Most women wouldn't go near him, including my mom, who closed her eyes in death bringing me to this life.
She was said to be a gentle, high yellow woman. "Your mom was the only woman in the world man enough to hear my holy thoughts," Pa boasted, "for I am a man of many parts." Whatever them parts was, they didn't add up to much, for all full up and dressed to the nines complete with boots and three-inch top hat, Pa only came out to about four feet, eight inches tall, and quite a bit of that was air.
But what he lacked in size, Pa made up for, with his voice. My Pa could out-yell with his voice any white man who ever walked God's green earth, bar none. He had a high, thin voice. When he talked, it sounded like he had a Jew's harp stuck down his throat, for he spoke in pops and bangs and such, which meant speaking with him was a two-for-one deal, being that he cleaned your face, and spit-washed it for you at the same time.
Make that three-for-one when you consider his breath. His breath smelled like hog guts and sawdust, for he worked in a slaughterhouse for many years. So most colored folks avoided him, generally. But white folks liked him fine. Many a night I see my Pa fill up on joy juice, and leap atop the bar at Dutch Henry's bar, snipping his scissors, and hollerin' through the smoke and gin, "the Lord's coming. He's a-comin' to nash out your teeth and tear out your hair."
Then fling hisself into a crowd of the meanest, low-down, pissed-drunk Missouri rebels you ever saw. And while they mostly clubbed him to the floor and kicked out his teeth, them white fellas didn't no more blame my Pa for flinging hisself at them in the name of the Holy ghost, than if a tornado was to come along and toss him across the room. For, the spirit of the Redeemer who spilled his blood was serious business out on the Prairie and them days, and your basic white pioneer, weren't no stranger to the notion of hope. Most of 'em was fresh out of that commodity, having come west on a notion that hadn't worked out the way it was drawed up anyway, so anything that helped them out of bed to kill off Indians, and not drop dead from fever and rattlesnakes was a welcome change.
It helped too that Pa made some of the best rotgut in Kansas territory. Though he was a preacher, Pa weren't against a taste or three, and like it's not the same gunslingers who tore out his hair and knocked him cold, would pick 'em up afterward and say "let's liquor," and the whole bunch of 'em would wander off, and howl at the moon drinking Pa's giddy sauce. Pa was right proud of his friendship with the white race, something he claimed he learned from the Bible. "Son," he'd always say "always remember the book of Hezekiah-- 12th chapter 17th verse. 'Hold out thy glass to thy thirsty neighbor, Captain Ahab, and let him drinketh his fill.'"
I was a grown man before I knowed there weren't no book of Hezekiah in the Bible, nor was there any Captain Ahab. Fact is, Pa couldn't read a lick, and only recited Bible verses he'd heard white folks tell him.
I'll read a little bit more, okay? And this--
[00:11:28] Betts: Yeah yeah
[00:11:29] McBride: --was John Brown. Um--
Dutch Henry sat right near the Missouri border. It served as a kind of post office courthouse, rumor mill, and gym house for Missouri rebels who came across the Kansas line to drink, throw cards, tell lies, frequent whores and howl to the moon about [n-word]s takin' over the world, and the white man's constitutional rights being throwed in the outhouse by the Yankees and so forth.
I paid no attention to that talk, but my aim in them days was to shine shoes while my Pa cut hair and shoved as much johnnycake and ale down my little red lane as possible. But come spring, tuck- talk in Dutch encircled around a certain murderous white scoundrel named Old John Brown, a Yank from back east, who come to Kansas territory to stir up trouble with his gang of sons called the Potawatomi rifles. To hear them tell, it Old John Brown and his murderous sons planned to deaden every man, woman, and child on the Prairie. Old John Brown stole horses, old John Brown burn homesteads, Old John Brown raped women and hacked off heads. Old John Brown done this, and old John Brown done that, and why, by God, by the time they was done with him, Old John Brown sounded like the most onerous, murderous, low-down son of a bitch you ever saw. And I resolved if I was ever to run across him, why, by God, I would do him in myself just on account of what he'd done, or was going to do, to the good white people I'd knowed.
And not long after I made them proclamations an old, tottering, Irishman teetered into Dutch Henry's and sat in Pa's barber chair. Weren't nothing special about him. There was a hundred prospect and prairie bums wandering around Kansas territory in them days looking for a lift west or a job rustling cattle.
This drummer weren't nothing special. He was a stooped, skinny fellow, fresh off the prairie, smelling like Buffalo dung, with a nervous twitch in his jaw, and a chin full of ragged whiskers. His face had so many lines and wrinkles running between his mouth and his eyes, that if you bundled them up, you could make a canal.
His thin lips was pulled back to a permanent frown. His coat vest pants and string tie looked like mice had chewed on every corner of him, and his boots was altogether done in. His toes stuck clean through the toe points. He was a sorry-looking package altogether, even by Prairie standards, but he was white. So when he'd sit in Pa's chair for a barbershop for a cut and a shave, Pa put a bib on him and went to work. And as usual Pa worked the top end, and I'd done the bottom shining his boots, which in this case was more toes than leather. And after a few minutes, the Irishman glanced around, and seeing nobody was standing too close, said to Pa quietly, "you a Bible, man?"
Well, my Pa was a lunatic when it come to God, and that perked him right up. He said, "why boss, I surely is. I know all kinds of Bible verses." The old coot smiled. I can't say it was a real smile. For his face was so stern, it weren't capable of smiling, but his lips kind of widened out.
The mention of the Lord clearly pleased him and it should have, for he was running on the Lord's grace right then and there. For that was the murderer old John Brown himself, the scourge of Kansas territory, sittin' right there in Dutch's Tavern with a $1,500 reward on his head. And half the population in Kansas territory aiming to put a charge in him.
There's ya read.
[00:14:49] Betts: Yeah man, I appreciate that. That's a-- it's, like, a fantastic book and it's great to hear it-- to hear it in your voice, and hear those characters come to life.
[00:14:57] McBride: Well, um, you know, um, writing a book is sort of like letting God into the room and hoping he's coughing, and that you got a handkerchief.
[00:15:08] Betts: Um, You do a lot of characterization with voice in this, and I know you play the sax, but it almost feels like, uh, a jazz musician, and John Brown, when he talks, it becomes him running on a solo. And I feel like it's the same kind of thing for Onion. So I wonder how, you know, when you develop these characters. And you tryna get a richness, and voice, and trying to distinguish them so that when you read it, you hear different people.
What is that process like?
[00:15:36] McBride: Well, You know, there are a lot of ways to tell a story. And, um, I know since I'm talking to people in prison, I'll give them everything I have, and maybe this will help them through today. Because I don't normally do this, but I'm going to do this 'cause I want-- I want these men, and . Hopefully some of these women, to understand that, you know, when you get-- when you have something you have to share it with somebody. So, now, I'm sitting at a piano now, and if you have a song like this: [plays angular, single-note melody]
That's "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and the standards, you know, [plays same song with a smoother feel]
But there's a lot of ways to tell that same story. [plays jazz-inspired, upbeat version of song]
And when I was a kid, and my mother would take us to church, you know, she would say, well, you know, and I'd be sitting there, you know, and the, you know how, you know they pass that little tray around, you know, cause when the, when the minister is finished, he passed the tray around and, and you're supposed to [plays melody evoking seriousness]
Ya know 'cause they trying to get--and I'd be talking about, [plays quick melody, evokes mischief] and my mother would be in the back and says, "I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna kill you." But there's a lot of ways to tell the same story, and a good minister can do that. A good minister can tell a story-- a good storyteller-- it doesn't have to be a good minister, it could be a good, uh, you know, a prophet. It could be a good person. It could be a good, holy man. They have a lot of ways to tell the story. So it's really not about the storyteller, but it's about the structure of the story that you choose. Because the truth, though, is that John Brown was, was a man who was humorless. He had no, he was, he had no sense of humor.
He was dead serious guy, and if he said he was going to pull out his, you know, pull out his six shooter and drop the hammer on it, you can pretty much count on that happening. So, I chose to tell the story in a way that would, that would engage people and also involve a lot of the humor that brings a smile to your face.
When I play, you know. [plays same song with a lighter feel]
Because a lot of us know you're supposed to be in church singing. Meanwhile, they done moved the tax base out the neighborhood that-- the crack dealers have everything-- there's no opportunity for young people, yet you still find a way, and a means to smile about life. That's really why-- that's really, that's really why I did that example because I want people to see, I want a lot of these men and women, hopefully, to see that there's a lot of ways to tell your story, and the structure that you choose is really the most important-- the most important means of getting the story, transmitting that particular history to people.
[00:18:45] Betts: Yeah, no, that's powerful.
[00:18:47] Hardy: I'm curious how you got interested in John Brown to begin with, and also-- thinking about structure, and like the different choices that you can make in telling a story-- how you came to the decision to tell it, not from his perspective, but from the perspective of a child.
[00:19:03] McBride: Well, um, I just got, I got interested in him because I was doing a book about Harriet Tubman that eight people read, you know. And I have 11 brothers and sisters so that, that tells you how many people read that book. But while I was researching the book, I was down in, um, in the DC, Maryland area, you know, and, uh, and, and, uh, I was at a, uh, um, an Easton, Maryland, E-A-S-T-O-N where Frederick Douglas was born, in the historical society.
And, you know, these historical societies are normally run by, you know, people who are-- look at it this way: when a black person walks into historical society, they get nervous right away. You know, cause they, they think you either there to bum money or steal something or whatever. And then if you ask intelligent questions, either they're nice about it, or they're just ding dongs. The ones in Easton, Pensyll- in Easton, Maryland were ding-dongs. But, so, I didn't bother with them cause I had work to do. And there was a diary there that mentioned John Brown. He was on the Eastern shore of Maryland, which is a little, you know, the little, where Annapolis and all that is. Any case, he mentioned John Brown and he mentioned the raid on Harper's ferry, and I was so fascinated I just drove right over to Harper's Ferry and took a look at it. When I looked at it I said "this is a good story." So when I finished the Harriet Tubman book, um, and then I wrote a James Brown book after that, and then I went and went back to the John Brown story and tried to figure out a way to tell it.
I decided to use a kid's voice, um-- the truth is, the person who's telling the voice, he's an old man, but he's a kid. So, you know, the trick is you have to tell it in the voice of a kid, with the maturity, and the hindsight, and the wisdom of an old man. Childhood incidence is always a good thing to use if it's used right. It's oftentimes not used right. But it's refreshing to read about it when it's from the perspective of a- of a kid who's poor or black or Hispanic, you know, because, um, that part of innocence has never-- rarely seen. I mean, you know, Claude Brown did it, and Richard Bright did it to some degree. I mean, Toni Morrison does it with brilliance in The Bluest Eye, but it's- there's not a lot of it.
So I see this all the time in Red Hook. I can see the innocence leaving these kids' eyes when they're 11, 12 years, especially when you get a cell phone. You know, and that just bothers me a lot. But anyway, so, that's why I chose that- that form.
[00:21:30] Betts: Yeah, no, that's interesting 'cause you know I-- I wrote my memoir, and one of the things I was trying to do was, was try to write from a kid that was 16, and suddenly in prison.
And um, I like to think of- of prison, widely, as like innocence lost or innocence found. Mainly because you end up really as close to the bottom that that you'd ever been in life, and I think if you smart about it, you- you start to confront the world in a way that's, um, that reveals something to you that you refused to notice.
And so anyway, I tried to write my book that way, but I think I struggled with it partly because, um, I had no real idea what story I was telling. And I, and I feel like Onion is that way though. You know, Onion has no idea what story he's telling. Like he doesn't know if he's going to make it. He doesn't know what's going to happen from moment to moment, and you see a complexity in his decisions.
And I wondered, when I was reading, and there's something that happens between the black characters where the moral dilemma is so complicated that nobody has one train. You know, Bob is his own person. Um, Sibonia is just fantastic. But then, so is Pie in a way, and I found that Onion couldn't judge any of them. And I found that I couldn't judge any of them either.
And I just wondered, were they intentionally set against the- the moral clarity that, on a surface, John Brown had?
[00:23:12] McBride: Well, you, you asking a two-part question. The first part question is-- you probably know the answer to that better than I do, but there's certainly-- there's a lot there, because the, the, a young person who is finding his moral compass, um, who hits bottom in- in- in the prison industrial complex in America, has to develop an enormous amount of fortitude and strength and, hopefully, help both inside and outside the institution to- to- go- to get back, to finding the, the buoy point, the lighthouse that they had started with before they ended up there. Because, you know, because prison is basically-- it's a trap, you know? It's a trap that many, some many millions have fallen into.
So, if you coming into manhood at the same time that you're in, that you fall into the machine, a lot of these questions can't be answered properly unless there's someone there to help you do that. And I'm sure in some, in a lot of cases there are people to help you make that move. But, in terms of John Brown's perspective, and the perspective of the book, is that one of John Brown's gifts was that he didn't judge anybody. And as a writer, you have to remember: if there is no judgment, there is no journey. If there is no journey, there is no book.
So you're right. Pie was a villainous character, but we're not qualified to judge whether Pie was villainous or not. She used what she could to get where she could go. And I remember when I lived on 43rd street in Manhattan, it was, you know-- this is back in this back going back 25 years now-- you know, the prostitutes there were the-- I felt safer with them on the street than when the cops were around, because they all knew me. And, you know, I mean, and I knew that their, you know, their handlers-- they knew I didn't bother 'em, so I knew that when I hit the block-- when I hit 43rd, between 9th and 10th-- I was okay. I was safe. Now, but out on 44th street, that's a whole different thing. But, you know, but I knew when I hit my block, if them ladies were-- I was safe, I didn't have to walk in the middle of the street or nothing like that. And because I didn't have judgment for that, I understood-- or at least I thought I did. This is their job. My job is to take my horn and get back to that apartment 'fore somebody knocks my teeth out and takes my horn and my, my $50. that I just made.
So, my point is that the second part of question is easy to answer: when there's no judgment, there's no journey, without a journey there's no book. The first part-- really, you're more qualified to discuss that for me, from the perspective of being in prison. But, but from the perspective of being a young person who has who's trying to follow their moral compass-- that's not necessarily a young person problem. That's a problem for everybody. And at some point, the older you get the become more, you become who you really are, whether you're in or out of jail, you still become who you really are. And if your moral compass is set straight, then you- your chances of getting into, you know, into "the good place" after you leave this life, whatever that good place is for you, are much greater because what John Brown does say, and that always affected me, he said this: "this little small space is life. And the rest of it is what's beyond us." And you know, if you want to get to the rest of it, you're karma in this life has better be- it better be right.
[00:26:39] Hardy: So I've done two degrees in African American studies at this point, and my dad has had a longstanding fascination with John Brown-- he's a jazz pianist and he's writing a musical about him-- and yet this was the most time that I had spent with John Brown. I really came to know him through this book. And I had always had this impression of him as being this, like, very impassioned, but measured, person. But. In the novel, he comes off as being kind of unwieldy, almost fanatic. And so I wonder how much of his personality you invented and how much was rooted in history?
[00:27:17] McBride: I don't know. Um, I didn't- once I started writing the book, I didn't really go back to check to see if, you know, like if someone brought him a 7Up instead of a ginger ale, if he'd like, you know, flip out. Um. Novels don't happen that way.
Um, so I, you know, this, John Brown is a fictional character based on- quote unquote- "based on" the real thing. Um, he did a lot of the things that the real John Brown did, but I really can't answer that question because the very act of deciding what to include or exclude makes every piece of nonfiction a piece of fiction, really.
I mean, a lot of the people that, um, That we're talking about that are going to see this-- if they could tell you their side of the story, it would be completely different than what, you know, the prosecutor or the cops or the victim would have to say. So we create these set of arbitrary laws, or maybe not-so-arbitrary laws that tell us, you know, who's right, and who's wrong.
As a storyteller, your job is to try to avoid the traps that are- that are morally unjust. And so that was more important to me than whether I was accurate to, you know, like, whether John Brown would-- so, you know, I- it doesn't matter. Because we live in a world of, of right and wrong where the goalposts have moved around so much that, you know, today's patriotic hero is tomorrow's- is tomorrow's villain.
Um, you know, so your moral justice has to come from someplace out of society. The moral drive within us has to be attached to something that is good if you want to write good books, anyway. But anyway, I hope that answered your question.
[00:29:08] Betts: I just wonder, where does that come from? Because your books chase something and it's here in The Good Lord Bird, but it's also here in Deacon King Kong where-- I don't know, I end up liking your characters, and my- my ability to like them as people-- it's not, like, rooted in race. It's not rooted in culture. I guess I'm trying to say that you do a, a really good job of portraying a multifaceted group of people in ways that we are often, here and now, suggested is impossible.
[00:29:41] McBride: Bitterness and anger is toxic to good writing. And- and it's also toxic to leading a good life.
I always remember when crack destroyed the housing projects, destroyed families and, you know, the level of patience, and goodwill, and kindness, and humanity, and courage that so many of these people who suffered this face life with makes me- makes me- it makes me ashamed to even complain about, you know, a flat tire, really.
So, yeah, I have an appreciation for all cultures. I mean, part of it's because of the way I was raised. You know, my mother was white, you know. We lived in the black community. We never really, you know, uh, nobody called my mother names. I mean, they knew she had all these kids and they kids would fight back, and nobody called us "mulattoes" or nothing, you know. I mean, they call us [n-word]s mostly if they called us anything.
But I mean, you know, we- I mean, we- we were- we were happy. Now today, you know, it's different. It's a whole different world. But I mean, this hardcore racism, classism that exists in the world was not really part of my growing-up life. You know, we just treated people decent, and my church was the same way. Not all of us, now. You've got some serious hypocrites in the church, but-
So it just- it just came out in my books, that's all. I mean, look at- look at your- your great writers-- W.E.B. Dubois and Toni Morrison-- and your great musicians-- Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane-- everyone talks about, they say we're the nicest people. Really, people who knew them, you'd say-- you know, Miles Davis was supposedly, oh, he would pull a gun on you. They always said about black jazz musicians-- they all'd pull a gun on you.
[00:31:30] Betts: You must have known that in my head, when you were naming that list, I was like, "I don't know if they gonna say that about Miles Davis though." [laughs]
[00:31:36] McBride: Well, if you listen to Eddie Jefferson's music-- Eddie Jefferson who- who did- who did a lot of, you know, he translated jazz solos into words-- and he explains what Miles is like.
And, um, Miles was a very good person. Um, he was a tortured man. He was a brilliant cat, man. And, um, you know, these guys weren't pulling out guns and shooting because they were, like, trying to rob people. They were creating an art form that went around the world, and they couldn't even get a glass of soda in Memphis. So, you know, at a- at a restaurant.
So, I mean, look, if someone punched you in the face like five times, are you supposed to stand there and say, you know, "may God bless you, and keep you-" maybe, but maybe not. Everybody's not going to act the same way when they're oppressed. That said, I'm not against someone who- who's Italian and becomes a mafioso because he can't get a job-- a real job-- can't go to college. And I'm not against an Irishman who becomes a cop, or an Irish woman who becomes a cop because that's what their father did. I'm not even against them becoming a racist because that's what they know.
What I'm against, is when they translate that into a kind of, you know, wholesale oppression of people because they are too lazy to look into history, or too- or too- lack the- the- the desire to look into the causality of why they're behaving the way they do.
[00:32:58] Betts: You should know that like, one of the cool things is listening to somebody you admire riff on the world and the communities that they live in. You know, there's people inside that's like, "I've done serious harm to folks, and I'm trying to transform my life, and I'm doing all of this work," and hearing you talk, I think, is opening up the ability to, like, grapple with some of that, because you know, the- the- the- the notion that we mischaracterize people because we choose to only see them and view them superficially is one of the things your books push against, but one of the things that we need to hear more of.
'Cause I actually feel like, you know, That's the mo- one of the more powerful aspects of the book, is to see the humanity in the folks who didn't always make the decisions that- that you imagine you would have made.
[00:33:46] McBride: You know, God will forgive the blackest sins in the world-- pardon the use of the term "black"-- he'll forgive the worst sin. You're entitled to make mistakes in this life. And a lot of the mistakes you make are based on the information that you have.
Information is everything. Books are the gateway to freedom. You know, I- I'm- I'm not gonna regale you with stories of people that I've known who made just one mistake and suffered their entire life for it.
Because- because I- you- you know, your- your audience knows that story. But the- the real story is those who can take that moment-- where they wish they were to take that moment back-- and let off that and move into the freedom that exists within here. Because when you open a book, you can go- you can travel around the world, and you can go inside yourself and you find things that need work, and then you go to the library, and you find a book, and that book will tell you, it'll give you avenues in which you can find ways to tell that story to yourself in, in ways that you find acceptable. Because you can't- you can't live your life- you can't live your life thinking that you should have done this or that-- that's gone. It's about the struggle for freedom now, and it's about the struggle to be full now. And you can be full anywhere.
I talked to Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Rollins was in prison, and he- it really offends him when peop- when people bring that up, as well it should, because in his day, you know, a lot of jazz musicians did drugs. They had to, just to keep from going crazy. And, uh, he got busted for something. I think, you know, it doesn't matter what it was. What matters is every time someone talks about him, they always mentioned that, like that defines him. That act or whatever act it was, does not define him. You can't let someone else's judgment of your mistake and your tribulations define you.
And so he went on after that, and he became one of the great musicians of all time. And so, if you're writing a book, just make sure that your structural approach is free of bitterness and cynicism. Try to be, not-- not necessarily pure, nobody's pure-- but just try to be honest about what you see and what- what you know. And it'll help your- your- it'll help your story and it'll help you, because writing is a great catharsis.
Um, and the writing skills that you have, that you develop when writing on your own, will help you once you get to the outside. Uh, your ability to tell a story can take you a long way in this country-- as- as evidenced by the four years of the 45th president we've experienced. This guy does nothing but tell stories.
Most of them not true. Doesn't matter. He's a storyteller. Tell a good story, and people who are too dense enough to realize it's a lie-- they just listen to it. But a wise person will pick up a book, say this is-- here. Here's a book: History of Disability in the United States, Epilepsy, uh, uh, Cape Verdean writers.
These were the people that Moby- that Herman Melville was writing about when he wrote Moby Dick. By the way, the last three chapters of Moby Dick is probably the most exciting piece of fiction you will ever read. Ever. Ever.
When that whale gets mad, it's over. Captain Ahab starts kicking all kinds of ass, Moby Dick gets mad, and that's a metaphor for life, right?
They were all going out to get this whale, they was going to kick the whales. "Oh, we going to get some whale meat and blubber." Okay. Okay. Check out Moby Dick. He had something for you. So how can someone hurt you when you know that kind of history- when you have that in you? It can't touch you. History is power.
Anyway. Um, I got to go soon, but, um, um- I have to leave in like five minutes. I'm sorry to say, I'm the only guy in the COVID thing that gotta go to work and all this, but everybody else is sitting home, watching Netflix.
[00:37:53] Betts: Yeah, no, we just got- we just got one more question.
[00:37:55] McBride: All right.
[00:37:57] Elsa Hardy: We ask all of our interviewees this question at the end of our conversations.
Frederick Douglas said that when we read, we become forever free. We'd love to hear what that means to you.
[00:38:09] McBride: You know, reading is the last line of defense- the last line of defense between the Wild West and you. And so, when you open a book, you- you're putting up a barrier between what the world thinks of you, and who you really are.
So I can't emphasize it enough. If you read you- you, uh- you're moving on the path towards true freedom.
[00:38:37] Betts: You know, I appreciate the time that you've taken to talk to us, and I deeply thank you.
[00:38:41] McBride: Well, I'm um, uh- thank you for inviting me and I hope the project continues in- in all of its greatness, and I'm glad I got a chance to rant and rave and, uh, anything I said, that's useful-- use it. Whatever's not useful-- just toss it in the trash. It's just- don't even worry about it. He's just an old fart. Take what you can, And, uh- and the rest of it- just leave it, and move, you know, move on and remember that God will bless you. Just put God first-- however you see him or her. You know, look, whatever gets you to the mainland.
You know, whatever gets you to the mainland, stick with it. And if it's that good, give me a little taste too. I'm- I'm with you. I gotta go now. See you later.
[00:39:23] Betts: Thanks for joining us for The Freedom Takes: the new podcast from the Million Book Project. We'll be back next time with another contemporary writer. You can find out more about the Million Book Project, and subscribe to our newsletter at millionbookproject.org. Our initiative was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.
This podcast was produced by Erin Slomski-Pritz, with production and research assistance from Elsa Hardy, Tess Wheelwright and Molly Aunger. We had additional help from students in the Cornell Prison Education Program at Auburn and Elmira prisons in New York. Theme music by Reed Turchi.