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A review by richardbakare
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
4.0
Some books get recommended so much and so often you just have to pick them up. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride is exactly one of those seminal titles. Set in the 1930s in Chicken Hill, a diverse neighborhood where Jewish immigrants and African Americans live side by side. The story revolves around Chona Ludlow, a Jewish woman who runs a local grocery store, and her efforts to protect Dodo, a deaf Black boy, from being institutionalized by local authorities. Through themes of community, resistance, and moral courage, McBride weaves a tale of solidarity and survival amidst racial and societal tensions.
This novel covers a lot of generational, cultural, political, and racial trauma. McBride does not attempt to heal or those traumas or even say they have gotten better. He does speak to how we have always had salves of one sort or another to manage those struggles. McBride paints with brush strokes that color in the past, future, and in between in a way that is more impressionist that realist. In some ways leaning into tropes and in others calling them out. The goal is to give the reader a sense of a time and place that repeated itself across America with slightly different aspects of the story.
The cultural blending of Black, Jewish, Native, and other cultures into a tapestry of an emerging America was most interesting. McBride spends extra time to show how almost every minority ethnic group spends time in the “other” column before someday blurring into the larger homogeneous “they.” All except for those black and brown bodies whose history of racial traumas and continued other-ification may never let them become fully “American.” McBride also pulls the story all the way forward to present-day with careful allusions to our current issues with gun violence, politics, and similar topics.
McBride’s style is like a home cooked meal; rich and filling. The kind of food you sit down and discuss deep topics to. You don’t finish thinking your problems are solved but that you are all the better for facing the truth head on and taking steps towards a better tomorrow. The way he portrays love and mystery between characters is well grounded in how so much of human connection is implied and unspoken. McBride’s character development is solid and he connects the simple and complex story points using these characters with solid through lines. I am all the better for reading this one and feel safe adding one more must-read recommendation to it.
This novel covers a lot of generational, cultural, political, and racial trauma. McBride does not attempt to heal or those traumas or even say they have gotten better. He does speak to how we have always had salves of one sort or another to manage those struggles. McBride paints with brush strokes that color in the past, future, and in between in a way that is more impressionist that realist. In some ways leaning into tropes and in others calling them out. The goal is to give the reader a sense of a time and place that repeated itself across America with slightly different aspects of the story.
The cultural blending of Black, Jewish, Native, and other cultures into a tapestry of an emerging America was most interesting. McBride spends extra time to show how almost every minority ethnic group spends time in the “other” column before someday blurring into the larger homogeneous “they.” All except for those black and brown bodies whose history of racial traumas and continued other-ification may never let them become fully “American.” McBride also pulls the story all the way forward to present-day with careful allusions to our current issues with gun violence, politics, and similar topics.
McBride’s style is like a home cooked meal; rich and filling. The kind of food you sit down and discuss deep topics to. You don’t finish thinking your problems are solved but that you are all the better for facing the truth head on and taking steps towards a better tomorrow. The way he portrays love and mystery between characters is well grounded in how so much of human connection is implied and unspoken. McBride’s character development is solid and he connects the simple and complex story points using these characters with solid through lines. I am all the better for reading this one and feel safe adding one more must-read recommendation to it.