NEW YORK – Oprah Winfrey has chosen James McBride's “Deacon King Kong” for her book club. McBride's novel is set in a Brooklyn housing project in 1969 and centers on the shooting of a drug dealer by an aging and tipsy church deacon.
But it also pays tribute to community and to McBride's own childhood in a Brooklyn project. “I wanted to write about a world I love and respect and how we learned to get along,” he told The Associated Press during a telephone interview. “We had racial problems in the ‘60s and ’70s, but we weren't at each other's throats.
It was a little different, and the police weren't militarized, with all of these military weapons.”Tuesday's announcement of “Deacon King Kong” continues Winfrey’s partnership with Apple that.