The next Kol Ami Book Circle Selection is, “Deacon King Kong,” written by award winning author, James McBride. This book is listed as one of McBride’s two titles on the list of “20 Books by Black Jewish Authors You Should Read.” It is one of president Barack Obama’s favorite reads from 2020; And, was selected as a favorite on Oprah’s Book Club.

 

This is a great opportunity to engage and celebrate Black History Month by reading a Black Jewish Author! We hope to expand our discussion from people outside of our regular book circle participants to especially welcome members of our Anti-Racism Working Group and Tzedek Council to join us. 

 

This is what Oprah had to say: "National Book Award–winning author McBride is also a jazz musician, and this raucous, poignant, humanity-embracing novel set in a Brooklyn housing project in 1969 reads like a sax solo, all riffs, unlikely juxtapositions, and sweet, piercing high notes. The backdrop for this ode to hard-swilling pals Sportcoat and Hot Sausage and saintly, no-nonsense Hettie—and the many other colorful characters who inhabit these pages—is a poor churchgoing community that welcomes all form of sinner. That may explain the sense of joy and love emanating from every page.”

And from The New York Times, Top 10 Books of 2020: “A Mystery story, a crime novel, an urban farce, a sociological portrait of late- 1960s Brooklyn: McBride’s novel contains multitudes…He conducts his antic symphony with deep feeling, never losing sight of the suffering and inequity within the merriment.”