The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

At its heart, McBride’s novel is about building community across cultures. The story is set in Chicken Hill, “a tiny area of ramshackle houses and dirt roads where the town’s blacks, Jews, and immigrant whites who couldn’t afford any better lived” (8). These diverse groups may share a neighborhood and financial struggles, but proximity alone cannot build solidarity. The relationships between Black people and Jewish people are impacted by Pottstown’s social hierarchy, which strongly favors white people. Many of Chicken Hill’s Jewish residents want social mobility and respectability, which, in Pottstown, are contingent on securing white approval.

Over time, most of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents and their businesses leave Chicken Hill once they can afford to relocate into town. Indeed, Moshe wishes to do the same, but Chona refuses to move because she sees service to diverse peoples as an essential part of her Jewish faith: “‘This area is poor. Which we are not. It is Negro. Which we are not. We are doing well!’ ‘Because we serve, you see? That is what we do. The Talmud says it. We must serve’” (27). The Jewish residents’ increasing proximity to whiteness and privilege strains their relationships with Chicken Hill’s Black community.