Emphasize The Positive': James McBride On The Kindness That Shaped Him

Growing up in a housing project in Red Hook, Brooklyn, writer James McBride felt a sense of community and freedom that was incomparable to anywhere else.

"It was the sense of being in a village, and a sense of us against the world," he says. "You know who everybody is, you know who not to mess with."

On the surface, McBride didn't quite fit in; his African American father died shortly before McBride was born, leaving him and his siblings to be raised by their white mother.

"My mother's story is unique because she was a white woman raising all these black kids," McBride says. But the neighborhood enveloped her: "The kindest people in her life were African American," he says.

Most cops are good people. They're not paid well enough. They're not respected enough. They're not treated well. ... But in general, you can't be a novelist, you can't be a creative person, if you are so cynical about the world that everything you say and write is negative. So I don't put the cloak of evil on policemen. ... You have to emphasize the positive, otherwise, why write about people at all?

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.

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