Nadine Gordimer's Returns with a New Novel

Gordimer returns to Fresh Air to discuss her new collection of essays called The Essential Gesture, about her role as a white woman in South Africa fighting against Apartheid.

The white South African writer hopes that her works have educated her readers about the realities of apartheid in her home country. Her newest book is called A Sport of Nature.

Journalist and musician James McBride. His new book, is "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother" (Riverhead) about his mother who was white and Jewish, but refused to admit her race. McBride's father was black. For years, McBride knew nothing about his mother's early life. It wasn't until he started work on the book, that she opened up to tell him that her father was a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi in rural Virginia, a racist, and he sexually abused her.