Summary of Deacon King Kong By James McBride

By C.B. Publishers

A chapter by chapter high-quality summary of James McBride ́s book Deacon King Kong including chapter details and analysis of the main themes of the original book.
About the original book:
In September 1969, Sportcoat, a stumbling, irritable old church deacon, shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, grabs a.38 from his pocket, and murders the project's drug dealer at point-blank range in front of everyone.
The causes for this desperate outburst of violence, as well as the consequences that follow, are at the core of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's hilarious and poignant novel, his first since the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. The victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed the shooting, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself are all vividly depicted in McBride's book Deacon King Kong.
As the novel progresses, it becomes evident that the individuals' lives, caught in the chaotic swirl of 1960s New York, intersect in unexpected ways. When the truth is revealed, McBride demonstrates that not all secrets are supposed to be kept hidden, that facing change without fear is the greatest way to develop, and that hope and compassion are the seeds of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.B. Publishers
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005753191

C.B. Publishers

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Book preview

OVERVIEW

Deacon King Kong was authored by American novelist James McBride and released in 2020. It's a work of near-historical fiction set in American cities and dealing with societal themes. McBride's 1995 book The Color of Water, about growing up in a mixed-race household in Brooklyn, was a financial and critical success, and his own life experience parallels some of the themes and tales in Deacon King Kong.

President Barack Obama gave McBride the National Humanities Medal in 2015 for his remarkable literary work on racial narratives. His novel The Good Lord Bird received the National Book Award in 2013. McBride's other artistic accomplishments include serving as Writer-in-Residence at New York University, musical composition and performance as a saxophone, and collaboration on numerous significant cinema adaptations of his works. He has also been honored by several other organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

SUMMARY

In the fall of 1969, Deacon King Kong takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Although the novel covers a range of individuals, the protagonist is an elderly Black man named Cuffy Lambkin, also known as Sportcoat, who lives in the Cause Houses housing project. Sportcoat, an alcoholic who used to be a baseball coach and umpire, approaches a young drug dealer from the Cause called Deems Clemens and shoots him.

Deems loses an ear yet manages to live. Because Sportcoat nurtured and cared for Deems during his youth and adolescence, everyone in the Cause is perplexed by the shooting. Sportcoat is still grieving the loss of his wife Hettie, who died two years before the events of the novel. The pair were active members of Five Ends Baptist Church in their neighborhood, and many of the novel's characters are linked to the church in some way. Hettie drowned in the neighboring port, and her corpse was discovered by the men of a local Italian mafia (Thomas Elefante).

Elefante, known as The Elephant due to his surname, is another plot strand. His father left him a smuggling company, which he now runs alongside construction, haulage, and storage. One night, a mystery Irishman (the Governor, or Driscoll Sturgess) approaches Elefante and tells him that he used to be friends with Elefante's father and that he needs help finding a precious treasure that Elefante's father had hidden for him. Elefante is unsure of its whereabouts; nevertheless, after seeing the Irishman's daughter, Melissa, Elefante falls in love with her and decides to assist him.

Meanwhile, Deems' drug ring seeks to revenge against Sportcoat for the shooting, causing further violence and turmoil in the area. This friction exacerbates the fear and danger that elderly residents experience as a result of the increased prevalence of hard substances like heroin in the projects.

Drugs cause crime and violence, trapping young people in a cycle of poverty, addiction, and dependence. As Deems attempts to rise through the ranks of his drug ring, tensions, and violence rise, resulting in deaths, injuries, and threats to the community.

When the artifact—a miniature statue of a fertility goddess dubbed the Venus of Willendorf—turns out to be buried in a brick of the Five Ends Church's rear wall, Sportcoat and Elefante's stories collide.

Despite the numerous barriers that society throws in their way, the love between Sportcoat and Elefante restores a sense of justice to the area, and many people make a good change in their own lives and the lives of the community.

Deacon King Kong examines the late-twentieth-century culture and tensions of New York City's neighborhoods, as well as how they transformed in reaction to crime and societal development. As minority races were persecuted and commodified by White people, and emerging generations of poor communities were stopped from realizing their full potential, the American ideal was severely scrutinized. The novel's narratives of Black women who experience varying degrees of freedom, self-realization, dissatisfaction, and communal memory drive the plot and disclose fundamental