{"id":22077,"date":"2001-09-05T16:13:16","date_gmt":"2001-09-05T20:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=22077"},"modified":"2017-01-26T14:53:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T19:53:55","slug":"james-mcbride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2001\/09\/05\/james-mcbride\/","title":{"rendered":"James McBride opens 147th academic year at Bates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2001\/09\/mcbride-minkoff.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"280\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2001\/09\/mcbride-minkoff.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignleft\" alt=\"James McBride\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>James McBride, an award-winning composer, saxophonist and best-selling author whose writing explores the complexities of racial identity, officially opened the 147th academic year at Bates College with the convocation address &#8220;The Color of Water: A Meditation on Identity&#8221; on Sept. 5. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of first-year students along with other members of the Bates community gathered in front of Coram Library to hear McBride urge students to reach out to others, to use college as a time explore one&#8217;s intellectual passions, using that self-knowledge to pursue careers that they love.<\/p>\n<p>McBride&#8217;s critically acclaimed book debut, <em>The Color of Water: &#8220;A Black Man&#8217;s Tribute to His White Mother<\/em> (Riverhead Books, 1997), explores his mother&#8217;s past as well as his own upbringing and heritage. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his book rested on The New York Times bestseller list for more than two years. The Times called McBride&#8217;s work &#8220;a triumph&#8230;.The two stories, son&#8217;s and mother&#8217;s, beautifully juxtaposed, strike a graceful note at a time of racial polarization.&#8221; Incoming members of the Bates class of 2005 and their faculty advisers\u00a0 received a copy of McBride&#8217;s book that was a centerpiece for conversation as the academic year began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James McBride, an award-winning composer, saxophonist and best-selling author whose writing explores the complexities of racial identity, officially opened the 147th academic year at Bates College with the convocation address &#8220;The Color of Water: A Meditation on Identity&#8221;  on Sept. 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,133,179],"tags":[2579,6135],"class_list":["post-22077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-creativity","category-language-literature","tag-convocation","tag-music-tag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22077"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91195,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22077\/revisions\/91195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}