The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store Plot Summary

Introduction

In the shadow of the Great Depression, a small Pennsylvania town became an unlikely stage for one of America's most revealing social dramas. As economic hardship gripped the nation, the neighborhood of Chicken Hill in Pottstown emerged as a rare intersection where marginalized communities—Black Americans, Jewish immigrants, and others excluded from mainstream society—created networks of survival and solidarity that defied the era's rigid segregation. This forgotten corner of American history illuminates how racial boundaries were simultaneously enforced and challenged, how economic necessity sometimes created unexpected alliances, and how institutional power was wielded against those deemed "undesirable" in eugenic-minded America. Through the microcosm of Chicken Hill, we witness how America's contradictions played out in daily life—a nation founded on freedom that systematically denied that freedom to many citizens. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store serves as both literal setting and powerful metaphor for how marginalized communities created alternative spaces of dignity when excluded from mainstream institutions. This historical exploration speaks to anyone seeking to understand how ordinary people navigated extraordinary constraints, how solidarity emerged in unlikely places, and how the struggle for human dignity continued even in America's darkest economic hour. The echoes of these Depression-era struggles continue to resonate in our contemporary conversations about race, belonging, and community.

Chapter 1: Chicken Hill: Marginalized Communities in 1930s Industrial America

In the years following the stock market crash of 1929, Pottstown, Pennsylvania exemplified how industrial America's social geography reflected its racial hierarchies. Chicken Hill, a neighborhood perched literally and figuratively on the margins of town, became home to those excluded from more desirable areas—primarily Jewish immigrants and African Americans, with some Italians and poor whites scattered throughout. The physical landscape itself told the story of American segregation: muddy unpaved roads, houses without indoor plumbing, and the prestigious Tucker School looming above on higher ground, a daily reminder of the prosperity that remained just out of reach for Chicken Hill residents. The economic realities of Depression-era Pottstown created a complex web of interdependence among these marginalized communities. Jewish merchants opened stores that served Black customers when downtown establishments refused them service. African American workers found employment in Jewish-owned businesses when white companies wouldn't hire them. Italian immigrants brought culinary traditions and work ethics that enriched the neighborhood's cultural fabric. These connections weren't born from idealism but necessity—a pragmatic response to exclusion that allowed communities to survive when the larger economic system offered them little protection during America's worst economic crisis. Daily life on Chicken Hill revealed how America's racial boundaries operated in practice rather than theory. Children of different backgrounds played together in streets and yards, creating friendships that transcended adult categories. Women shared childcare responsibilities and cooking techniques across cultural lines. Men worked alongside each other in factories or collaborated on neighborhood projects. These interactions didn't erase racial distinctions or eliminate prejudice, but they created a foundation of familiarity and mutual respect that contrasted sharply with the rigid segregation enforced elsewhere in Pottstown and across America. The physical proximity of Chicken Hill fostered unexpected alliances that sometimes challenged the era's racial orthodoxies. When illness struck, neighbors helped regardless of background. When economic hardship threatened a family's stability, the community often mobilized resources across racial lines. The story of Dodo, a deaf Black child, demonstrates how these connections transcended conventional boundaries. When state authorities threatened to institutionalize him at Pennhurst, it wasn't only his family who protected him—the Jewish storekeeper Chona and others joined forces to shield him from a system that devalued children with disabilities, especially Black children. What made Chicken Hill remarkable wasn't the absence of prejudice but the ways residents navigated America's racial realities while maintaining their humanity. Jewish residents understood they occupied a precarious middle ground—not fully accepted by white Christian society yet possessing certain privileges denied to Black residents. This arrangement created complex dynamics where Jewish merchants sometimes served as economic bridges between communities while still maintaining their distinct cultural identity. For Black residents, daily life required careful calculation about where they could go, how they should behave, and what aspirations were realistic in a society structured to limit their opportunities. The community that emerged on Chicken Hill represented both America's failures and its possibilities. The very existence of this segregated neighborhood testified to the nation's broken promises of equality. Yet within this constrained space, residents created economic systems, social networks, and cultural practices that allowed them not merely to survive but sometimes to thrive. Their story reveals how America's racial crossroads weren't just abstract policy debates but lived realities where people made difficult choices, formed unexpected alliances, and occasionally created small spaces of justice within a profoundly unjust society.

Chapter 2: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: Commerce as Resistance

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store stood as more than a simple business establishment on Chicken Hill—it represented a radical defiance of segregation's logic. Operated by Chona, a Jewish woman with physical disabilities from childhood polio, and her husband Moshe, the store emerged as a sanctuary where the rigid racial boundaries of 1930s America temporarily dissolved. Located in a modest building with creaking floorboards and limited inventory, the store's true wealth lay in the connections it fostered among Pottstown's marginalized communities during the harshest years of the Depression. Chona's approach to business directly challenged the economic practices that reinforced racial hierarchies throughout America. While downtown merchants refused service to Black customers or treated them with disdain, Chona extended credit liberally during hard times, knowing that many families—particularly Black families with limited employment options—might otherwise go hungry. This practice defied conventional business wisdom but reflected a deeper understanding of community economics. The store's ledger books, filled with unpaid accounts that might never be settled, represented an alternative economic model where human relationships took precedence over strict profit calculations. The physical space of the Heaven & Earth facilitated crucial social interactions that built community across racial lines. Customers lingered to exchange news, seek advice, or simply enjoy brief respite from difficult circumstances. For Black residents who faced hostile treatment in downtown establishments, the Heaven & Earth offered dignity alongside groceries. Jewish immigrants found familiar products and conversation in their native languages. Children received small treats regardless of their parents' ability to pay. These seemingly minor interactions created a foundation of trust that transcended racial categories imposed by the broader society. The store's inventory itself reflected a form of cultural resistance. By stocking items specific to different communities—kosher products for Jewish customers, ingredients essential for traditional African American cooking, specialties requested by Italian families—Chona acknowledged and validated diverse cultural identities at a time when America's dominant culture demanded assimilation. This approach transformed commerce into cultural preservation, allowing communities to maintain traditions that connected them to their histories and identities despite economic hardship and social pressure to abandon these practices. What made the Heaven & Earth truly revolutionary was Chona's willingness to actively protect vulnerable community members, even at personal risk. When Dodo, a deaf Black child, faced institutionalization by state authorities after witnessing something he shouldn't have, Chona didn't merely sympathize—she acted. She hid the boy in her store and coordinated with neighbors to shield him from officials. This decision placed her in direct opposition to powerful systems, including medical authorities like Doc Roberts who represented the town's establishment. Her store became not just a place to purchase goods but a fortress against institutional injustice. The legacy of the Heaven & Earth extended far beyond its commercial transactions. Through daily operations that prioritized human dignity over profit, community wellbeing over individual advancement, and practical solidarity over abstract principles, the store modeled an alternative vision of American society. Without grand pronouncements or political manifestos, Chona and Moshe created a living example of commerce as resistance—demonstrating how everyday economic activities could either reinforce or challenge existing power structures. Their approach suggested that genuine resistance to oppressive systems often begins not with dramatic confrontations but with creating spaces where different rules apply, where people are valued for their humanity rather than categorized by their race, religion, or ability.

Chapter 3: Crossing Boundaries: Jewish and Black Solidarity

The relationship between Jewish and Black residents of Chicken Hill represents one of the most compelling aspects of Pottstown's social dynamics during the interwar period. Both groups existed on the margins of American society, though in distinctly different ways. Jews like Moshe Ludlow had escaped European persecution only to find new forms of discrimination in America, while Black residents faced the entrenched racism of a nation still living in the shadow of slavery. Their unlikely alliance in Chicken Hill emerged not from ideological commitment but from practical necessity, creating a complex web of relationships that sometimes transcended America's rigid racial categories. Economic cooperation formed the foundation of this interracial solidarity. Jewish merchants opened businesses that served Black customers when white establishments refused. Moshe's All-American Dance Hall and Theater challenged Pottstown's segregation norms by booking Black performers like Chick Webb and opening doors to Black audiences. These business decisions were initially pragmatic rather than ideological—Black audiences spent money just as well as white ones—but they nevertheless represented a significant challenge to the social order. Similarly, Black workers provided essential labor for Jewish businesses and sometimes found employment opportunities unavailable elsewhere. This economic interdependence created daily interactions that gradually built trust and understanding between communities that mainstream society insisted should remain separate. Cultural exchange flourished within these economic relationships. Music emerged as a particularly powerful bridge, with Moshe's theater creating rare spaces where racial boundaries temporarily dissolved during performances. Jewish audiences gained appreciation for Black musical traditions while Black performers found venues where their talents were recognized and compensated. Similarly, food traditions crossed cultural lines as Jewish merchants stocked ingredients essential for traditional African American cooking while adopting elements of these culinary practices themselves. These exchanges didn't erase distinct cultural identities but enriched them through interaction, creating hybrid practices unique to Chicken Hill. The alliance between these communities wasn't without tension. Cultural misunderstandings, economic competition, and the pressure to assimilate into white American society created strains. Some Jewish residents, eager to gain acceptance from Pottstown's Protestant establishment, distanced themselves from both their religious traditions and their Black neighbors by moving downtown. Others, like Chona, refused to abandon Chicken Hill despite achieving financial success. These different responses reflected the complex calculations marginalized groups made as they navigated America's racial hierarchy—recognizing that upward mobility often required distancing oneself from those lower on the social ladder. What made these unlikely friendships possible was a shared experience of otherness. Both communities understood what it meant to be viewed as less than fully American, though their experiences differed significantly. When Chona fell ill after Doc Roberts' assault, it was her Black neighbors who maintained a constant vigil, bringing food and comfort. When Dodo needed protection from state authorities, Jewish allies like Moshe and his cousin Isaac provided crucial resources for his escape. This mutual aid system represented an alternative American narrative—one where different communities recognized their common humanity despite the forces trying to keep them apart. The solidarity that developed in Chicken Hill wasn't based on naive colorblindness but on a clear-eyed recognition of interdependence. When Fioria Carissimi, an Italian mother, began asking questions about what happened at the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, the community's protective response crossed racial lines. This solidarity didn't erase differences but created space for a shared humanity that the broader society denied. The relationships formed in this marginal neighborhood demonstrated that America's racial boundaries, though powerfully enforced by law and custom, could sometimes be transcended through daily acts of cooperation and care that recognized common vulnerability in the face of institutional power.

Chapter 4: Institutional Power: Pennhurst and America's Eugenic Legacy

Pennhurst State School and Hospital loomed as a dark counterpoint to the fragile community solidarity of Chicken Hill. Established in 1908 as the "Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic," this sprawling institution embodied America's eugenic approach to disability and difference during the early twentieth century. By the 1930s, Pennhurst had transformed from a supposed educational facility into a warehouse for those society deemed undesirable, including many children with disabilities, particularly those from poor or minority backgrounds. Its very existence reflected how institutional power operated to segregate and control populations considered threats to America's racial and genetic "purity." The physical reality of Pennhurst revealed institutional priorities that had little to do with care or education. Spread across 1,400 acres with dozens of buildings connected by underground tunnels, the facility resembled a small city with its own power plant, farm, and even railroad spur. Yet within this self-contained world, residents experienced profound deprivation. Overcrowding forced people to sleep in hallways. Staffing shortages meant minimal supervision and care. Basic necessities like proper clothing, adequate food, and medical attention remained scarce. For children like Dodo, placement in Pennhurst meant entering a world of neglect rationalized as treatment. Medical authority provided the intellectual framework justifying Pennhurst's existence. Doctors like the fictional Doc Roberts wielded tremendous power to determine who belonged in society and who required institutionalization. Their judgments, often based on superficial assessments and biased assumptions, could permanently alter lives. For Dodo, a deaf Black child who had witnessed something he shouldn't have, medical authority became a weapon wielded to remove him from the community. His deafness was conflated with intellectual disability, and his Blackness made him especially vulnerable to a system designed to segregate "undesirable" elements from society. This intersection of disability and race created a double marginalization that exemplified how America's eugenic thinking targeted multiple aspects of human difference. The institutional culture at Pennhurst reflected broader societal attitudes about disability, race, and human value. Staff members like the character Son of Man wielded nearly unlimited power over residents, with minimal oversight or accountability. Abuse flourished in this environment, ranging from neglect to exploitation and violence. The hierarchies within the institution mirrored those outside—with Black and immigrant attendants occupying lower positions while still exercising control over residents. This arrangement created complex dynamics where those marginalized by society sometimes perpetuated harm against those even more vulnerable, demonstrating how institutional power could corrupt even those who themselves experienced oppression. Pennhurst's existence depended on community complicity and willful ignorance. Local residents provided labor for the institution while avoiding questions about conditions inside. Politicians secured funding while ignoring reports of abuse. Families, often acting under extreme duress or misinformation, surrendered loved ones to institutional care. This collective silence allowed Pennhurst and similar institutions nationwide to continue operating despite conditions that violated basic human dignity. The struggle to free Dodo from this system revealed how thoroughly American society had accepted the segregation and institutionalization of those deemed different. The legacy of Pennhurst extends far beyond its eventual closure in 1987 after decades of abuse scandals and legal challenges. Institutions like Pennhurst represented the practical application of eugenic thinking that influenced American policy from immigration restrictions to forced sterilization programs. While Nazi Germany's eugenic horrors eventually discredited the movement's most extreme manifestations, the underlying belief that some lives were less valuable than others continued to shape American institutions throughout the twentieth century. The story of Dodo's wrongful institutionalization illuminates how these abstract policies translated into profound human suffering, particularly for those at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. His experience represents thousands of similar stories that remain largely untold in American history.

Chapter 5: Underground Networks: Reimagining Freedom Routes

The escape plan for Dodo reimagined the Underground Railroad for a new era, adapting its principles of secret networks, coded communication, and community solidarity to challenge institutional power. Just as the original Underground Railroad had created pathways to freedom for enslaved people, this Depression-era version established routes out of Pennhurst's confines. The literal underground tunnels beneath the institution became passages toward liberation, their original purpose subverted to serve those the system sought to contain. This reimagining connected the struggles of 1930s marginalized communities to America's longer history of resistance against unjust confinement. Pennhurst's tunnel network represented both the institution's power and its vulnerability. Originally constructed to move supplies between buildings during harsh weather, these passages created a hidden infrastructure beneath the visible institution. Employees like Bullis, who delivered eggs and coffee through these tunnels, developed intimate knowledge of this shadow world. Miggy, working as an attendant, gathered crucial intelligence about security procedures and staff routines. This information, shared through carefully coded conversations over sweet potato pie, became the foundation for an audacious rescue operation. The tunnels symbolized how systems of control often contain the seeds of their own subversion. The collaboration between different marginalized communities echoed the interracial cooperation that had characterized the historical Underground Railroad. Nate, as a Black man, faced the greatest personal risk by entering Pennhurst. Jewish railroad workers provided transportation for the escape. The residents of Hemlock Row, a small Black community with their own distinct culture and traditions, contributed crucial knowledge and connections. Each group brought specific skills and resources to the operation, creating a network that no single community could have established alone. This coalition demonstrated how solidarity could emerge across lines of difference when confronting shared threats. Communication systems developed through necessity and ingenuity. Unable to speak openly about illegal activities, participants relied on metaphors, coded language, and indirect references. Miggy's explanation of Pennhurst's layout using pieces of sweet potato pie demonstrated how everyday objects could convey complex information while maintaining plausible deniability. These communication strategies reflected generations of experience navigating hostile environments where direct speech could bring swift punishment. The development of these codes highlighted how oppressed communities created parallel languages that allowed them to coordinate resistance while appearing to conform to expected behaviors. The timing of the escape during Memorial Day celebrations revealed strategic thinking that exploited the system's vulnerabilities. With attention focused on patriotic displays and community gatherings, security at Pennhurst relaxed slightly. The fireworks and parades created both distraction and cover for unusual activities. This careful attention to timing demonstrated how thoroughly the rescuers understood the rhythms of institutional and community life, using this knowledge to create momentary advantages in an otherwise unequal power struggle. Their approach reflected a sophisticated understanding of how to identify and exploit cracks in seemingly impenetrable systems. The successful extraction of Dodo through the tunnels and his transportation south via railroad represented not just a single child's liberation but a symbolic challenge to institutional authority. By demonstrating that Pennhurst's walls were permeable, the operation undermined the institution's aura of absolute control. The involvement of railroad workers—connecting the literal underground railroad of Pennhurst's tunnels to the actual railroads that would carry Dodo to safety—created a powerful continuity with historical resistance movements. This reimagining of the Underground Railroad adapted its principles to confront new forms of confinement, suggesting that the spirit of resistance that had challenged slavery continued to inspire responses to institutional injustice in the twentieth century.

Chapter 6: The Cost of Justice: Sacrifice and Moral Choices

The struggle for justice in Depression-era Pottstown demanded profound personal sacrifices from those who chose to challenge institutional power. Nate's decision to enter Pennhurst himself to rescue Dodo, knowing he might never return to the life he had built with Addie, represented the ultimate expression of love as sacrifice. By surrendering his hard-won stability to save his nephew, he demonstrated that genuine justice often requires giving up what we most cherish. His choice reflected the impossible moral calculations forced upon marginalized people when confronting systems designed to exclude and control them. The confrontation between Nate and Son of Man in Pennhurst's basement tunnels brought two damaged souls into fatal alignment. Both men carried histories of trauma and violence, but they had responded differently to America's brutal racial realities. Son of Man had channeled his pain into predatory behavior, exploiting those more vulnerable than himself. Nate had struggled to build a life of dignity and connection despite his painful past. Their encounter forced Nate to make an impossible choice between his moral principles and Dodo's safety, resulting in violence that would forever separate him from the life he had built in Pottstown. This moment illustrated how systems of oppression often force the oppressed into moral compromises that further traumatize them. For Jewish allies like Moshe and Isaac, participation in Dodo's rescue required risking the precarious acceptance they had achieved in American society. As immigrants who had escaped European persecution, they had worked tirelessly to establish themselves in Pottstown. By aiding a Black child's escape from a state institution, they jeopardized this hard-won security. Their willingness to take this risk stemmed from recognition of shared vulnerability despite different circumstances. Their choice reflected how marginalized communities sometimes found common cause against systems that threatened them all, albeit in different ways. The journey south represented both an ending and a beginning. For Dodo, it meant leaving behind the only home he had known for an uncertain future in South Carolina. For Nate, it meant returning to a place associated with painful memories while creating a new life centered on his nephew's wellbeing. This migration inverted the typical pattern of the Great Migration, which saw millions of Black Americans move north seeking opportunity. Their southward journey acknowledged that sometimes safety and community could be found by returning to roots rather than pursuing the American promise of progress. This choice highlighted how justice sometimes requires abandoning conventional paths to success. Addie's steadfast love represented another dimension of sacrifice. Though she had built her life around her relationship with Nate, she accepted his decision to accompany Dodo south, understanding that their separation served a greater purpose. Her willingness to continue without him, maintaining their home and carrying their shared values forward, demonstrated love's capacity to endure physical separation. The promise that she would eventually join them in South Carolina offered hope without diminishing the immediate sacrifice of their separation. Her experience reflected how women often bore different but equally significant burdens in the struggle for justice. The aftermath of these events revealed how communities absorb and transform tragedy. Chona's death, Doc Roberts' disappearance, and Nate's departure created voids in Chicken Hill that could never be filled exactly as before. Yet life continued. Moshe maintained his theater. Addie kept their home. New connections formed as others dissolved. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store closed, but its spirit lived on in the community bonds it had fostered. This resilience in the face of loss demonstrated perhaps the most enduring form of justice—the commitment to continue living and building community even when the cost of doing so includes heartbreaking sacrifice. Their persistence suggested that justice isn't always found in legal vindication but in the determination to maintain human dignity despite systems designed to deny it.

Chapter 7: Legacy: How Divided Communities Shape Modern America

The discovery of a skeleton in 1972 brings Chicken Hill's buried history back to the surface, forcing a reckoning with long-suppressed truths. The Pennsylvania State Troopers who question Malachi about the remains find themselves confronting a mystery that spans decades. The mezuzah pendant found with the skeleton—inscribed with "Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World"—provides a tantalizing clue that connects past to present. This archaeological moment symbolizes how America's racial history remains literally and figuratively buried, occasionally surfacing to demand acknowledgment despite efforts to pave over uncomfortable truths. Hurricane Agnes arrives with biblical timing, washing away evidence before investigators can fully uncover what happened. The storm's destructive power serves as both literal cleansing and metaphorical justice, erasing the physical traces of past crimes while allowing certain moral accounts to be settled. As one resident explains, the hurricane took "the whole business—the water well, the reservoir, the dairy, the skeleton, and every itty bitty thing they could'a used against them Jews—and washed it clear into the Manatawny Creek." This natural intervention represents how American history often proceeds through cycles of revelation and erasure, with full reckonings perpetually deferred. By 1972, Chicken Hill itself has undergone dramatic changes reflecting broader transformations in American society. The Jewish population has largely departed, with Malachi described as "the last of 'em." This exodus mirrors national patterns as Jewish Americans achieved greater acceptance and assimilation, often moving from urban enclaves to suburbs. The Tucker School has expanded its campus, buying up properties and attempting to erase the neighborhood's diverse history. Only Malachi's house remains as a stubborn reminder of what once existed. His disappearance after the hurricane completes the erasure of Jewish presence from the Hill, symbolizing how completely some ethnic communities have been absorbed into mainstream American identity. The legacy of Dodo's case extends beyond individual justice to institutional reform. The narrator mentions that "they put that whole camp up there in Montgomery County now on account of him, the Jews did." This suggests that his case eventually led to changes in how institutions like Pennhurst operated, perhaps through advocacy from Jewish community members who remembered their own history of persecution. This represents a delayed form of justice that comes too late for many victims but creates structural change for future generations. The reference connects Dodo's story to the actual closure of Pennhurst in 1987 after decades of abuse scandals and legal challenges, suggesting how individual cases sometimes catalyze broader social transformations. The contrasting responses to Hurricane Agnes reveal persistent inequalities in American society. For Pottstown's wealthy white residents, the storm represents unprecedented catastrophe as "white folks was jumping off their rooftops in Pottstown like they was on the Titanic." But for Chicken Hill's Black residents, it was "just another day of dodging the white man's evil." This divergent experience highlights how natural disasters often reveal and reinforce existing social hierarchies. The different capacity to recover from such events—based on insurance coverage, government assistance, and personal resources—ensures that even "acts of God" have discriminatory impacts that perpetuate historical patterns of advantage and disadvantage. The final accounting of justice remains ambiguous, reflecting the complexity of America's racial reckonings. The bones in the well belong to someone described only as "that rotten scoundrel whose name is not worthy to be called by my lips," suggesting that some form of community justice occurred outside official channels. The narrator's satisfaction that these remains are "at the bottom of the ocean, with the fish picking his bones and the devil keeping score" indicates that not all injustices were addressed through formal legal systems. This ambiguity speaks to the reality that America's history of racial violence contains many cases where conventional justice proved impossible, forcing communities to find alternative forms of closure and healing that exist outside official narratives.

Summary

The tapestry of Chicken Hill reveals America's fundamental contradiction: a nation founded on freedom that systematically denied that freedom to many of its people. Throughout the Depression era, the residents of this Pennsylvania neighborhood navigated overlapping systems of exclusion based on race, religion, disability, and class. Yet within these constraints, they created remarkable spaces of connection and resistance. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store became more than a business—it embodied an alternative vision of community where human relationships transcended artificial boundaries. Similarly, Pennhurst represented not just an institution but an entire philosophy that deemed certain lives less valuable and sought to segregate difference rather than accommodate it. The underground networks that eventually freed Dodo from institutional confinement demonstrated how marginalized communities sometimes found solidarity in their shared vulnerability, creating pathways to justice when official systems failed. The lessons of Chicken Hill resonate powerfully in contemporary America. First, genuine community requires recognizing our mutual vulnerability and interdependence rather than reinforcing hierarchies of human value. The residents of Chicken Hill survived because they developed economic and social systems that acknowledged their interconnection. Second, resistance to injustice often begins with small acts of defiance rather than grand gestures—Chona extending credit to struggling families, Miggy sharing crucial information about Pennhurst's operations, the railroad workers creating space for Dodo's escape. Finally, America's history contains not just stories of division but also powerful examples of solidarity across difference. By recovering these forgotten histories, we gain templates for building more just communities today, recognizing that our freedom remains incomplete until it extends to everyone, particularly those most vulnerable to institutional power.

About Author

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James McBride

James McBride is a native New Yorker and a graduate of  New York City public schools. He studied composition at The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and received his Masters in Journalism from Columbia University in New York at age 22. He holds several honorary doctorates and is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.  He is married with three children. He lives in Pennsylvania and New York.  James McBride is a former staff writer for The Washington Post, People Magazine, and The Boston Globe. His work has also appeared in Essence, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. His April, 2007 National Geographic story entitled “Hip Hop Planet” is considered a respected treatise on African American music and culture.As a musician, he has written songs (music and lyrics) for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., and Gary Burton, among others. He served as a tenor saxophone sideman for jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott. He is the recipient of several awards for his work as a composer in musical theater including the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award. His “Riffin’ and Pontificatin’ ” Tour, a nationwide tour of high schools and colleges promoting reading through jazz, was captured in a 2003 Comcast documentary. He has been featured on national radio and television programs in America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. ---from his official website

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