E-mail a friendJames McBride
airdate February 20, 2008
Journalist and saxophonist James McBride has several awards for his work as a writer and a composer. After earning his master's at age 22, he began his journalism career with stints at the Boston Globe, People magazine and The Washington Post. At age 30, he decided to pursue a music career and has written musical scores and toured with a variety of artists. McBride's '96 memoir, The Color of Water, is an American literary classic. Currently a writer-in-residence at NYU, his new book is Song Yet Sung.
Best-selling author and musician explains historical fiction and tells why he writes it. (1:14)
James McBride
Tavis: James McBride is an acclaimed author and writer in residence at New York University. His previous books include "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother." The book spent two years on the "New York Times" bestseller list. His latest is called "Song Yet Sung," which is once again receiving terrific reviews. James McBride, nice to have you on the program.
James McBride: Thank you for having me.
Tavis: I practiced for a while week trying to say that without screwing it up.
McBride: Well, you did pretty good.
Tavis: Say that real fast 10 times and you'll mess it up -- "Song Yet Sung." But I got it right. You been all right?
McBride: Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm very happy to be back on the show, to be here.
Tavis: We are glad to have you here. So I was saying to you before we came on the air that the reviews on this thing have been absolutely remarkable. I'm not going to say we've been stunned by it, but what do you make of the fact that universally, this book is on everybody's favorite book list now?
McBride: Well, maybe because it talks about slavery in ways that are different. I used to write, like, Wild West stories and so forth, and slavery is really an adventure. Once you get past the brutality of it, if you look at it from the perspective of just the whole business of who knew and who did not know and the codes that Black people used and so forth, it's ripe for picking if you're a fiction writer who wants to try to create kind of an adventure story around it.
Tavis: How do you define, then, because for some people it's oxymoronic to say historical fiction, but that's really what this is -- historical fiction. How do you describe what that is, though?
McBride: That's a good question. Well, for me historical fiction is the kind of fiction that you can create to put the story in front of people's noses so they can kind of digest it and get an idea as to what it was, as opposed to being accurate in terms of what it was, because most history, particularly history that concerns Black people, was written by people who are not Black.
So you have to read between the lines when you read history about Black folks. So for me, historical fiction kind of puts it into place where it puts it to the -- a lot of kids read my books. A lot of school kids read my books, and I want them to know about who Harriet Tubman was, and I want them to know about who Frederick Douglass was, but I want them to see them in an action way.
Because when I see pictures of Harriet Tubman, I see she looks like my grandmother. She doesn't look like what she -- her life is handled kind of like an Aesop fable, like a little kiddy story. She did this little thing. And so for me, historical fiction is the kind of fiction that presents the idea to people and allows them to extrapolate for themselves what might have happened.
Tavis: What, for you, is most fascinating about this woman, Harriet Tubman?
McBride: Well, look, I spent a lot of time on the eastern shore of Maryland, and even today, historians can still not figure out how she walked 300 people from the eastern shore to freedom. If you, I, and all your crew got up and walked down the street at 2:00 in the morning -- there's 15 people in this room -- people would figure, what are you all doing?
They really haven't figured it out. They're starting to kind of figure out how she did it, and that was the first thing. The second thing was that Harriet Tubman was struck in the head as a child, and she would fall asleep in the middle of a conversation and wake up, and she said that she would dream during those times, and she would dream of places that -- she would know it was time to hold, or time to move, or doing get on that boat, don't trust him, he's not the one. She was a child of god, she was a mystic. And so I found that to be fascinating.
Tavis: So the story told in "Song Yet Sung" through the character Liz is what?
McBride: Basically Liz is a dreamer, based on Harriet Tubman, and she dreams of the future. But she dreams of the future far beyond. She dreams of the future that if a slave were dropped here, in L.A., in 2008, what would they see? What would they dream?
So she dreams of young men driving cars and shooting out the windows. She also dreams of some negative, not all, but there's some negative elements of the hip hop culture, like the lack of respect for women and so on and so forth. Children running from books like they were poison. But she also dreams of, like, a great prophet who comes, someone who's promised.
And so all of that is buried in the whole business of "The Song Yet Sung." She learns the code of the Underground Railroad, which was called the Gospel Train back then.
Tavis: I was going to say as you may know; no, as you well know, having written this book, there's still to this day debate about what this code was, and whether or not this code amongst the slaves really existed. You rely heavily on it in the text.
McBride: I don't care what historians say. If you want to know if the code existed or not, just listen to the music. The music is -- music, first of all, helps you understand that God was watching Black people, and also the music is very clear. The Negro spirituals, "Wade in the Water," "We Will Break Bread Together on Our Knees," "Come to Jesus," "I Got Shoes, You Got Shoes."
These were all clearly songs that sang of freedom and often embedded messages within them. Unfortunately, slaves weren't allowed to write their histories, but it should be pointed out that Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman never told anybody how they got free. In fact, Frederick Douglass chastised those who wrote books -- like Henry Box Brown, the guy who put himself in a box and shipped himself to freedom -- he chastised Henry Box Brown for doing it because he said, "You just closed the gate for millions of others who might come that way."
So arguing about the code is a good way for historians to get quoted in "The New York Times" and so forth, but as an African-American, I'm convinced that the codes existed.
Tavis: There's a powerful passage in the text, in the book, of a conversation, speaking of faith in God, where it's hard for the slave master to understand why a slave could have faith in God.
McBride: Right, well, and the slave says to him -- and the man says, "I don't believe in God." And the slave says, "But it doesn't matter, because you don't have to believe in God, because God will always believe in you." I grew up in the church, and so God's work has -- as a person who grew up the church it's clear to me that God does believe in me, and he does believe in us, and he will bring us truth and hope and messages in our work. And that's part of my goal as a writer, to blend faith and trust and hope to push against the wall that surrounds us in terms of real freedom.
Tavis: Since Liz is dreaming in the text, she's dreaming about what would happen in real life, what's your sense of what would happen in real life if we could, in a contemporary setting, be exposed to what slavery really was?
McBride: That's a very good question.
Tavis: If we just dropped right down here, we'd be like, golly. (Laughter.) How would a Negro process that?
McBride: Well, one of the things we would probably understand more quickly is that slavery really was a web of relationships. When you talk about slavery, if you're talking about it with some kids they say, "Well, if I was a slave, man, I'd take my godfather, I'd kill them all."
Tavis: Everybody (unintelligible).
McBride: Yeah, that's right, that's right. It took enormous guts to do what Harriet Tubman did, but the thing is that it was a web of relationships. Most White people didn't own slaves. They owned two or three or four, and you knew that if you cut out you were leaving behind someone who maybe birthed your son or loaned you money or helped you when you were sick, and so forth.
So that web of relationships is something that Black and White people really don't understand that well. I think if we understood that well we'd be more prepared now for this wonderful political event that is happening today, because we truly are joined at the hip. Now Black people understand that inherently, more so than Whites, I think, because we have to.
But I think Black children don't understand what slaves were trying to get. It was something that's similar to what they're trying to get now, which is this whole business of just ferreting out what the crowd wants to do and just to educate yourself to be morally straight where in a world of cowboys and Indians, you're still the Indian.
I'm paraphrasing James Baldwin, who said "It's a heck of a thing at the age of six to realize in a world of cowboys and Indians that you're the Indian." And also finally, the other thing is that our children aren't allowed to have innocence. White Americans like the Beatles, we were so innocent. Black children -- so this book, and all of my work, deals with the innocence of us and how that innocence is slowly soiled and changed until we become the bitter -- and we even portray it as the bitter wise people like Maya Angelou.
I love Maya Angelou, but that whole business of the wise Black woman, and every time you see something about us on television they play that corny music, nameless, just oh the pain. Our innocence is important to us, it's what propelled us to greatness. That's what Barack Obama represents, in some ways. He represents our innocence in terms of what we used to think was possible. So that's what I strive for as a writer, to try to find that and to introduce that to people.
Tavis: You and our friend Spike Lee just finished up on -- or actually you're finishing up, I'm told.
McBride: Well, Spike Lee loves you, now.
Tavis: I love Spike.
McBride: This is straight -- this is --
Tavis: Hey, Spike. (Laughter.)
McBride: Yeah, we just finished filming "Miracle at St. Anna," my second book, which is about --
Tavis: So you're in the editing now?
McBride: He's editing. He did a great job.
Tavis: I'm sorry, I cut you off. The book is about? For those who haven't read the book yet.
McBride: It's about a Black soldier from the 92nd division who meets a little White Italian kid and becomes friends, and it takes place in Italy. And Spike filmed it over there over five months.
Tavis: When is that going to come out?
McBride: That's coming out in November on Disney Touchstone Pictures. November 2008.
Tavis: Spike does great work. This new book -- James McBride does great work. The new book is called "Song Yet Sung," from James McBride, the bestselling author of "The Color of Water." And by the way, if you have never read "The Color of Water," you have to get -- when you go pick this one up, make sure you get "The Color of Water as well. James, good to see you.
McBride: Thank you very much.
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