Judaism and Christianity, Annotated Bibliography Example

Azoulay, Katya Gibel (1997). Black, Jewish and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Interracial children typically construct methods of dealing with a dual heritage, and so it is with children with both Jewish and Black parents. How they accomplish this developmental task is explored in this work. The author investigates humanistic, hypothetical, and individual perspectives and implications of the merger of such disparate identities. She analyzes some of the presuppositions associated with being both Black and Jewish.

This is important for my research because the crux is an investigation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity as a method of understanding the trials and tribulations of one James McBride. James was the son of Jewish mother and Black father, and to understand him is to understand multifaceted perspectives into the challenges of a dual heritage.

O’Hearn, Claudine C. (1998). Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural. New York, Pantheon Books.

Biracialism is becoming more and more common. The resultant ambiguity in this emerging reality is discussed in this work. Is there some way of measuring ones race and culture? Questions related to dual identities speak to the benefits and drawbacks of having two or more race cultures in one person. Biracial essayists discuss such matters from personal experience in an effort to construct a unified whole out of the biracial experience.

This is important for my research because biracialism is central issue at hand. Essayists in the work share James McBride’s biracial identity of being both Jewish and Black. Furthermore, other essayist shed personal experience on the subject matter in general. The whole will help me understand the parts. In this case, the microcosm is further elaborated in the macrocosm.

Webb, Clive (2001). Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

The common experiences of both Jews and Blacks in the South are often defined by the civil rights movement in the 60s. Both communities faced difficult times and choices. Although some Jews owned slaves in the South, they themselves were faced with racial and cultural challenges of living among a White Protestant majority. In some ways, the Jewish community in the South empathized with their Black counterparts but never constructed a unified effort toward helping them because they were largely disconnected and scattered. All that changed in the 60s.

This is important for my research because it helps me understand James McBride’s world more deeply. By understanding the history of the relationship between Jews, Blacks, and Whites in the America, I can more astutely speak to James’s experience and the underlying implications of the historical conditions between Christians and Jews.