The kid who was the star of Sportcoat’s baseball team and who had major league scouts showing up at their games, Deems Clemens, is now 19 and a ruthless drug dealer. In the Sixties a new kind of trouble has come to the Projects. Most everyone in the Projects has a colorful name: Sportcoat, Hot Sausage, Sister Gee, Bum Bum, Miss Izi, Soup Lopez. Gardens for a few white folks around these parts. He knows just about everyone in the neighborhood. He still has long conversations with his wife Hettie who died two years ago. He drinks his King Kong alcohol several times a day, He is also a deacon in the Five Ends Baptist Church, whatever a deacon does. Sportcoat is an old guy, 71, who has somehow survived it all, living everyday in the Causeway Housing Projects in New York City. This is the secret of ‘Deacon King Kong’. Satire works best when the writer really likes the people he or she is making fun of. ‘Deacon King Kong’ by James McBride (2020) – 384 pages
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