In James McBride’s new novel, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” Black people and Jewish immigrants live side by side in a poor section of Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Chicken Hill, as the neighborhood is called, is a model of coexistence in the 1920s and ’30s. A Black resident helps the local Jews build a synagogue after the architect abandons the project. The Jewish proprietor of the titular grocery store extends credit to her Black customers without any expectation that they will settle up. She also agrees to hide a deaf Black boy from state authorities who want to institutionalize him. Her husband books Black musical acts at the theater he runs, defying the mores of the era.
The novel, released in August, has struck a chord with critics and readers alike. The New York Times and Slate deemed it a Great American Novel candidate. “We all need — we all deserve — this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us,” critic Ron Charles wrote in The Washington Post.
Given its subject matter, “Heaven & Earth” has been especially popular with Jewish readers. The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle chose it for its book club, and the Jewish Chronicle in London named it one of the best Jewish books of the year. (As readers of McBride’s 1995 memoir “The Color of Water” know, his mother, Ruth McBride Jordan, was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. She converted to Christianity after meeting James’ father in New York, and James identifies as Christian.)
Because I have a deep interest in the thorny topic of Black-Jewish relations, I devoured the new novel and enjoyed it, despite the author’s shaky grasp of some of the finer points of Jewish tradition. There are dissonant references to “Talmudic melodies” (which are what, exactly?), a man who is described as “spreading the Jewish Word” (um, no) and misspelled transliterations of Hebrew (“mazchor” instead of “machzor”). Still, I was excited to see McBride, a National Book Award winner, when he passed through the Bay Area on his book tour.
But my excitement quickly shifted to dismay. After starting his Sept. 10 talk at Dominican University of California in San Rafael by describing his research process for the novel, he went on a tangent about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as Mormonism), which does not figure in the new book. He called the religion “a little bit weird” and said its history is full of “barbaric” violence — though he did not mention that Mormons have often been the victims of such violence.
“I’m just showing my prejudice here,” he said in remarks that I recorded on my phone and am quoting verbatim.
He continued: “At bottom I believe that most people are good, and we’re more alike than we are different. My work has always been about that, you know, and even though I make some untoward remarks about Mormonism, I really don’t know that much about it — other than I hope my kids don’t become Mormons. If they do, I wouldn’t love ’em any less. I just hope they don’t. I wouldn’t say don’t do it. I’m just working myself into a hole here, as you can see.”
This prompted hearty laughter from the audience, which was composed of mostly older white folks.
“I can’t help but say what’s in my heart in an honest way,” he went on. “And the honest truth is that the Mormons aren’t our problem. Our problem is that we live in a time when it’s easy to say you hate someone and come up with an excuse for it and wrap yourself in the American flag.”
One could argue that, taken together, these remarks aren’t an egregious attack on a religious community. McBride, 66, took some digs at Mormons, but he also concluded that they aren’t the real problem in American society.
If he had made similar statements about Jews … I suspect many members of our Jewish community would be offended, as I would be.
Yet if he had made similar statements about Jews — “Judaism is a weird religion with a violent history,” “I hope my kids don’t become Jews” — I suspect many members of our Jewish community would be offended, as I would be. The sad part for me was that his remarks directly contradicted the spirit of his novel, which is one of tolerance and compassion for the other.
What prompted this anti-Mormon rant? McBride only gave a hint. He said he was jet-lagged after flying to town from New York. Early that morning, he’d found a copy of the Book of Mormon in his hotel room and began to read it. The text apparently sparked negative feelings, and he felt compelled to share them with the audience at Dominican.
It’s worth noting that the university, a Catholic one, has a policy on spiritual and religious life on campus. It reads in part: “We affirm that all religions, faiths, traditions, and beliefs are encouraged, accepted, and respected at Dominican University of California.”
Had McBride stayed after his talk to mingle with audience members and sign books, I would have approached him and asked about his dislike for Mormons. But he left immediately, and his representatives did not respond to my repeated requests for comment.
McBride is not an outlier among Americans in his views about Mormons, as I learned recently. According to a survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, 25% of American adults have an unfavorable view of Mormons, while 14% have a favorable one and 59% have a neutral one. (By contrast, 6% have an unfavorable view of Jews, while 35% have a favorable one and 58% have a neutral one.)
Journalist McKay Coppins, who is Mormon, offered a theory just this week about such attitudes: “A lot of conservative Christians consider Mormons heretics (and are annoyed by the proselytizing), a lot of secular liberals don’t like Mormons’ social conservatism (and are annoyed by the proselytizing), and most people know almost nothing about Mormons beyond polygamy and unflattering depictions in TV shows/movies.”
To be honest, I hesitated writing about this incident. McBride is not a politician, educator or institutional leader with power over others. He is a novelist with his own religious beliefs, which he is entitled to, of course.
Also, I am well aware that people of color, and especially Black men like McBride, tend to be more swiftly and forcefully pilloried for perceived missteps than white people who make similar missteps, or worse.
But McBride was given a public platform at Dominican, and he freely expressed his anti-Mormon prejudice. Again, that’s how he himself described his own remarks. I believe we Jews must always call out prejudice, especially when the target is a religious minority.
Or, as the Jewish character Malachi says in the novel, “Light is only possible through dialogue between cultures, not through rejection of one or the other.”