Register below to attend IN-PERSON. NOTE: Due to no-shows, we oversell registration to ensure a full house in the Berkley Theater. Registered patrons should be in their seats by 6:50 PM or risk losing their seats to those in the standby line. Click here to register for the LIVESTREAM.

Greenwich Library is thrilled to welcome James McBride, an award-winning author, musician, and screenwriter, to discuss his book Deacon King Kong, the Greenwich Reads Together book selection for 2021.

For your safety, all attendees will be required to show proof of full vaccination (in the form of their CDC Vaccination Card or a photo or photocopy of the Card) or a negative PCR Test taken within 72 hours of the event. No one will be admitted without this documentation. Protocols may be modified as and when laws, science, and/or institutional requirements change. Capacity in the Berkley Theater is set at 100% for adult programs. 

Click here to purchase a copy of Deacon King Kong from Diane's Books. 

A New York Times bestseller and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction, Deacon King Kong was one of the most celebrated books of 2020, was awarded the Gotham Book Prize and named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by TIME Magazine, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly. It was also an Oprah’s Book Club Pick and one of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” in 2020.

It is a funny, moving novel that begins when a fumbling, cranky old church deacon, known as Sportcoat, shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn in 1969 and pulls a .38 from his pocket. In front of everybody, he shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, McBride’s first novel since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird (2013). McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. 

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters–caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York–overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion. 

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.

A noted musician and composer, McBride has toured as a saxophonist sideman with jazz legend Jimmy Scott and other musicians. He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Pura Fé, Gary Burton, and even for the PBS television show Barney. He received the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award for his musical Bobos, co-written with playwright Ed Shockley.

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. 

Greenwich Reads Together is Greenwich Library’s community-wide reading experience that engages all of Greenwich in exploring a single book. It is supported each year by the Friends of Greenwich Library. In 2020, almost 20 community organizations and thousands of Greenwich residents participated in events around two topical non-fiction titles, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder and Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

This program is made possible through the support of The Friends of Greenwich Library.

For more information or questions about this event, please contact Kathy Cihi at kcihi@greenwichlibrary.org.