McBride's fiction works include Song Yet Sung, Miracle at St. Anna, Five-Carat Soul, The Good Lord Bird, and Deacon King Kong. He also wrote a biography of James Brown, Kill 'Em And Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown.
Related books by other authors include the memoirs American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood (2001) by Marie Arana, Crossing the Color Line (1996) by Maureen Reddy, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons by Jane Lazarre (1996), and Black Boy (1945) by Richard Wright. Book by other authors who wrote on race in the U.S. during the time Ruth and James McBride were growing up are also pertinent, especially James Baldwin's Go Tell It on...
