A memoir and transcript both by the black son of a white mother, this book was a mixed bag for me. Sociologically, it was very interesting that McBride's Orthodox Jewish mother turned her back on her family and her upbringing to marry a black man and with him to found a Christian church but I question McBride's own decision to dig into his mother's past and to publish a book on it. She herself was very reluctant to tell him her history so I wonder at her feelings that he's broadcast the past she tried so very hard to bury and forget for all the world to read. The memoir portions were well written although a bit repetitive. The transcription portions (because it is clear that he is transcribing interviews with his mother) were very choppy and exceedingly repetitious and would have been better served to have been edited and tightened up substantially. All in all, an okay read but not the "wow" that the NYTimes bestseller status might imply.

got this in a book box