James McBride
Photo by Dennis O'Brien

Born in 1957, James McBride grew up as one of 12 siblings in the all-black housing projects of Brooklyn. He is the son of a black minister and a Jewish mother, whose efforts to raise her family, while not admitting she was white, were the subject of McBride’s award-winning memoir, The Color of Water (1997). The book was an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. In 2002, The Color of Water became the first selection the New York City Reads Together program. His second book, Miracle at St. Anna (2002), is the story of an Italian orphan who befriends a black American soldier in Italy during World War II. The Dallas Morning News hailed it as "an outstanding novel," and The Baltimore Sun called it "searingly, soaringly beautiful." McBride is a former staff writer for the Washington Post, People Magazine, and the Boston Globe. He received a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University, and is also an award-winning composer, having studied composition at The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. In 2004, he was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the National Council on the Arts.

It was dawn. The order was to go. One hundred and twenty black soldiers from the 92nd Division bunched behind five tanks and watched them roll toward the water, then clumsily waded in behind them, rifles held high. On the other side, just beyond the river plains and mostly hidden in the heavy mountain forest of the Apuane Alps, five companies of Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring’s 148th Brigade Division, seasoned, hardened German troops, watched and waited.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506