Reading List · Literary Fiction
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His mother was a white Jewish woman from Poland who married a Black man in Harlem in 1942, was disowned by her family, raised twelve children in a Brooklyn housing project and put all twelve through college. She refused for years to tell her son what she was. The Color of Water is the book where he finally got it out of her. Everything McBride has written since — the Brooklyn tenement, the abolitionist's camp, the grocery store on Chicken Hill — is a version of that discovery: a crowd of people who should not have survived each other, and did.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Black American history · Community · Music · Updated September 2026
Quick answer
The closest matches are Colson Whitehead and Percival Everett, who share McBride's habit of putting comedy and atrocity in the same paragraph. For the community novel — a whole neighbourhood as the protagonist — read Edward P. Jones. For the deepest version of the same history, read Toni Morrison.
10 authors like James McBride
Where to start if you loved James McBride
If you want the closest match, read Colson Whitehead.
Same instinct to be funny about American history until the moment it becomes impossible, same refusal to sit in one genre.
If you loved the crowd in Deacon King Kong, read Edward P. Jones.
Nobody writes a whole neighbourhood as protagonist better.
If you want the deepest version, read Toni Morrison.
Song of Solomon first if you want story, Beloved if you are ready.
If you loved The Color of Water, read Kiese Laymon.
Heavy is the same act — a son writing to his mother — done without any of McBride's comic relief.
If you loved The Good Lord Bird, read Charles Johnson.
Middle Passage is the direct precedent: a comic adventure novel about slavery that never once becomes glib.
If you want more of his own work first
My guide to everything McBride has written has all eight books in order.
Frequently asked questions about authors like James McBride
Who writes books most like James McBride?
Colson Whitehead and Percival Everett are the closest contemporaries. All three write American history — slavery, Jim Crow, the twentieth-century city — with comedy and horror held in the same paragraph, and none of them stays inside one genre for long. For the community-as-protagonist structure of Deacon King Kong, Edward P. Jones is the better match.
What should I read after The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store?
Deacon King Kong is the obvious next McBride, since it works the same trick — a Brooklyn housing project rendered as a crowded, funny, dangerous ecosystem. Outside his own work, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City and Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle are the closest equivalents.
Which author is most like The Color of Water?
Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir is the closest — a memoir written as a direct address to the author's mother, about what she gave him and what she withheld. It is considerably harder going than McBride's book, which uses humour where Laymon refuses to.
Is James McBride similar to Toni Morrison?
They write about overlapping history but at different temperatures. Morrison goes deeper into interior consciousness and grief; McBride works outward across a crowd and lets comedy carry the weight. Readers who want Morrison's depth should start with Song of Solomon; readers who want McBride's warmth in a Morrison register might prefer Jesmyn Ward.
Where should I start with Black American literary fiction?
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God are the two foundations most of this list is built on. From there, Toni Morrison for depth, Colson Whitehead for range, James McBride for warmth, and Percival Everett for formal invention.
Sources
List last reviewed 5 September 2026.
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God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.
James McBride, The Color of Water. If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
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