The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

 

Thirteen of us met on August 24^th to discuss James McBride’s acclaimed 2023 novel, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, winner of the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. 

 McBride has said that his motivation for writing this book stems from his time working summers at a camp for differently abled children.  He said the nugget for The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was the story of Dodo and Monkey pants.

Bonnie quickly interjected that the theme about the Blacks and the Jews is the one that jumped out at her more.

Marian said she agreed with Bonnie here, especially since page one of the novel is about the interview the police had with Malachi about the mezuzah they found with the body at the bottom of the well.

There was a lot of discussion about how the mezuzah ended up with the body. Robin offered that Moshe had made it as a gift for Malachi. Malachi refused it and insisted that Moshe give it to his wife Chona. Doc Roberts had snatched it from around Chona’s neck when he attacked her. Robin called our attention to page 63:

“He gave his new friend a mezuzah pendant – a mezuzah normally adorns the doorway of a Jewish home. But this pendant could be worn around the neck, and it bore a special inscription on the back that read ‘Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World.’ That way, Moshe explained, Malachi would feel at home and welcome everywhere he went. But Malachi…returned the mezuzah and politely begged Moshe to give it to Chona, which he did, to her delight.”

Barb described a mezuzah with more detail, saying, “If you’ve ever walked into a Jewish home, you would see a decorative holder on the doorpost that holds a scroll. It’s a specific prayer.”

Robin added, “As you walk in you remember God and remember the commandments even in your house. The prayer must be written on parchment.”

Shelara shared with us her impressions she received from the book: “To the take part in the American dream you have to buy into anti-Blackness, some of the characters do. Malachi said, “This place is dirty.” The real heroes of the story don’t buy it into it. The German Jews feel they’re better than the Lithuanian Jews, The Lithuanians feel they’re better than the Romanian Jews. But they’re all in this group that is being oppressed. Fatty and Big Soap aren’t supposed to be friends, but they are, refusing to buy in to racism. In the end they’re working together to try to get water to the synagogue, the Shul. Chona and Berniece’s friendship had ended because of the system but Chona is able to have the relationship with Dodo. Those who forego the American way of life hold on to their humanity. Holding on to your geographic and cultural roots, you hold on to your humanity like the Lowgods on Hemlock Row. They didn’t buy into the system, and differently abled people demonstrated the most humanity in the book: both light and dark. Humanity is not just the good things, it’s also the bad things. You have Doc Roberts with a club foot and then you have Monkey Pants. The predatory nature of humanity is demonstrated by Doc Roberts and Son of Man. All of that is exhibited in those two characters. Then you have the beautiful nature, as demonstrated by Monkey Pants and Dodo touching fingers, I immediately thought of Michelangelo’s Adam. Monkey Pants’ sacrifice gave Dodo a new life.”

James McBride 

Wendy gave us her thoughts: “I thought it was so complex in terms of people and the relationships, the women in the book were especially complex.  Chona was just beautiful. I thought Miggy was so interesting. He wove in so many cultural pieces. The fear the Black people had of other Black people like the Lowgods. How the author described how Monkey Pants was trapped by his body and yet, what he managed to do. At the end you realized what Nate had experienced and the final person Dodo had called out to was Monkey Pants.”

Shelara reminded us of the way in which the WASP characters don’t like each other either. The person who thinks his family had been here the longest, Doc Roberts, was actually the descendant of a rogue Irishman who had to send his children away because he owed money to some dangerous people, that’s how Doc Roberts ended up in the US.

Wendy said she also saw that Doc Roberts was like a MAGA.

Shelara further described Doc Roberts, saying, “The things he brought into ruined his life too, he has to hate these people. The futility of that and the bizarre, weird way that you can think those things even though you were also an immigrant and had a physical ailment but because you fit in a couple of the boxes: ‘white, heterosexual, have money,’ you think that you are better and so him and Gus were a mess. They both marched in those KKK parades. Gus was Polish. The polish weren’t treated great when they got to America, but because Gus was able to pay in by hating another group of people, he was let in.”

Ann said that she felt the book was “a huge intellectual exercise and I was a literature major, and to me this was as hard as reading Shakespeare. But I really like the theme of compassion and people getting away from what we might call tribalism. I’m reading another book called The Constitution of Knowledge: a Defense of Truth, which talks about how people fight with each other over what they perceive as differences. But when they come together trying to help each other, it feels good. 

The Constitution of Knowledge
by Jonathan Rauch 2021

Michael Moore in his movie Bowling for Columbine, talks about violence in America is perhaps due to everyone who has immigrated here has come out of fear. Often when you show compassion, even for a negative belief, the person becomes more open-minded.”

Bowling for Columbine
film by Michael Moore 2002

Bonnie showed us a copy of The Color of Water, it’s James McBride’s memoir about his Jewish mother. She explained, “I read this book, The Color of Water, once for an African American Literature class and then for a Jewish Book Group. While reading this book (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,) my thoughts kept being interrupted by what I read in The Color of Water. McBride’s mother was Jewish his father was Black. What McBride learned about his Jewish background, and it was very little, came from his mother.”  Bonnie, continued, saying, “His mother was a self-hating Jew who only told her twelve well-accomplished children vicious stereotypes about rich and greedy Jews.” Bonnie said further, “This book The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was written for his mother, to disabuse her of her Jewish antisemitism. So, to me, this book was about Jews and Blacks getting along, helping each other. The groups of us who go back to the Civil Rights movement, the country was two percent Jews, but they were fifty percent of the Freedom Riders, they were fifty percent of the founders of the NAACP.”

The Color of Water 1995

Barb added, “I found this a moving book. I was confused at the beginning by all the characters. It took me a while to settle in with the richness that he introduced. I found that there were many moving sections. I’m one of several Jews in this room, so to be in a room of Blacks and Jews talking about the issues McBride raised and the many nuances about how they lived together, maybe not comfortably, but they cared about each other and that caring was what struck me the most. I was surprised by the introduction of Son of Man.”

William interjected here that it used to be a name for Jesus. We all chimed in, wondering why McBride would name such a character the name Jesus referred to when describing himself.

Barb continued, “He was a surprise character for me because we had evil shown in Doc Roberts, but I was surprised at Son of Man and his behavior, and that Monkey Pants made his own way of interrupting that horrible behavior that Monkey Pants had presumably been a victim of as well. And the names: Monkey Pants and Son of Man. It was such a rich book with so much in it.

Wendy: “So I have this image that comes to mind because of this link to Son of Man. Whenever he appears he seems to be dresses in shining white. It’s as if he illuminated a darkened room in the way that a religious figure would. It’s a kind of evilness that comes with power to whatever group you’re in, power turned toward a negative direction.”

Robin added, “It was interesting and confusing to me sort of how Nate, right before he kills Son of Man says, “It ain’t your fault. I thought that added Nate’s understanding of where Son of Man came from.”

Barb clarified, saying, “It ain’t your fault, is explained as Nate’s backstory gets revealed to us that he went to jail for killing his father who was abusing his mother.

Shelara, correcting Barb, said, “no, he didn’t go to jail for that, he killed him and then he ran. He ended up killing a lot of different people and he happened to kill someone who was so bad it was actually a relief to Hemlock Row.”

p.354: “…for there the reckless like of an abandoned child who lost to death both parents…Nate was the last Love on Hemlock Row who had come North to live among the Lowgods, who somehow forgot him and plunged him into a childhood of begging and stealing. And when the later years of earning a living as a grown man by laying suffering on any human for a price was stopped by a trip to the penitentiary that was visited upon him for the killing of a worthless rapist and thief who would have otherwise been laid low by some righteous man, it was as if that killing became Nate’s only redemption, if there was such a thing, as he came to hope that perhaps God might forgive him and find a purpose for him.”

Whether the true theme centers around Blacks and Jews living together, or about how two differently abled characters have rich interior lives, that include the determination to make connections, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is a book about people. Some people have good intentions, some have bad, but in the end there’s redemption and a touch of justice.