"What prepared me at MCLA for my internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and graduate school was the rigor of my physics classes. I would credit Dr. Adrienne Wootters in particular with teaching us to work hard and she was always willing to make time to work on problems with us when we couldn’t get them."
Kristy Moore ’05 Graduate Student, University of Rhode Island
News & Press Releases
Sept. 11, 2008
NORTH ADAMS, MA – Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) on Wednesday, Sept. 17, will present James McBride, an award-winning writer, saxophonist, and composer, who will present a lecture on this memoir, “The Color of Water,” and perform with his band.
On The New York Times bestseller list for two years, “The Color of Water” was this year’s summer reading assignment for first year students and the focus of a community read throughout the MCLA campus. McBride will discuss his book and present a musical performance at 7 p.m. in the Church Street Center. The event is free and open to the public.
“The Color of Water” has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and has become an American classic, read in colleges and high schools. It is the autobiographical account of his mother, a white Jewish woman from Poland, who raised 12 black children in New York City and sent each to college.
McBride is a former staff writer for The Boston Globe, People Magazine and The Washington Post. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times and Rolling Stone.
He is the recipient of the 1997 Anisfield Wolf Book Award as well as several awards for his work as a composer in musical theatre, including the American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award, The ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award and the American Music Theatre Festival’s Stephen Sondheim Award.
He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington, Jr., Gary Burton, Silver Burdett Music Textbooks and for the PBS television character “Barney,” and fronts a 12-piece rhythm and blues jazz band.
McBride studied composition at The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Whitman College and The College of New Jersey.
