Take The Color Of Water: A Black Mans Tribute To His White Mother Produced By James McBride Released As Hardcover

phenomenal read that was recommended to me by 'my' students several years ago, Of course, I've shared it with every single class since, I read so many books, that very few actually stick with me, evenyears after the fact, I cannot recommend this book enough, McBride writes from two different points of view: himself, and his mother, He parallels his growing up in poverty to his mother's story of moving to Harlem, before the civil rights movement, It is amazing. I had the opportunity to meet the author at a writer's conference right after we read this for bookclub, and he is a gentle soul who has the most respect for his mother.
It is eyeopening, inspirational, and an amazing read! If sitelinkCheaper By the Dozen, by Frank Gilbraith Jr, and sitelinkThe Color Purple, by Alice Walker, ever somehow met and had an "I like you as a friend, not a lover" child, The Color of Water would be it race and a ridiculous amount of kids.
The concept is compelling, and I would recommend this book to anyone who was disappointed that sitelinkRun, Ann Patchett's most recent book, didn't deal more directly with race issues in a mixedrace family.
Nominally, this book is a tribute to James McBride's mother, who was an unarguably interesting person, McBride's personal issues with his mother clouded her story, however, and his inability to emotionally separate from her enough to treat her as a character left me feeling that he bit off more than he could chew when he decided to write this "tribute".
McBride reflects that his mother was not comfortable having her story told and preferred not to discuss her past with him, which leads me to ask whether "tribute" is an appropriate word to put in the title of this book.
It would have been a stronger narrative if McBride had openly written The Color of Water as his own story, not his mother's,

Toward the end of the book, McBride admits that he experienced more emotion hearing his mother's story than his mother did telling it, This comes through awkwardly within the narrative, For example, he names his mother "Mommy", and that continues as the name of her character throughout the entire story, Though he reminds his reader four or five times that Mommy's name changed from Ruchel Dwarja Zylska in Poland to Rachel Deborah Shilsky in America to Ruth McBride Jordan after her marriages and renouncing of the Jewish faith, and though his sisters seem call her Ruth or Ruthie, he continues to refer to her as Mommy.
His character rebels, grows up, becomes a successful journalist, but still his mother's character is "Mommy",

At first, when I read The Color Purple, Mr, 's name was awkward to me, I didn't know how I was supposed to say it, I honestly wondered a little bit if Walker couldn't come up with a name for him, so she just left it out, By the end of the novel, the genius of both robbing Mr, of the right to a name, and calling him something that effectively gives him the potential to be Everyman deepens the novel, Not so with Mommy. McBride writes a specific woman, not a stock character, Mommy "waddles", likes her privacy, and doesn't like to do housework, While with Mr. I eventually hope that my last name never fills that blank, with Mommy I know it doesn't, She's not my Mommy, so do I have to call her that Does McBride still think of her as he did when he was a small child

McBride divides this book a' la sitelinkThe Grapes of Wrath, with alternating chapters that are vignettes from Mommy's point of view and chapters that are a continuing story from his point of view.
His mother's vignettes are at times very lovely, but at some point his chapters started repeating hers as though the stories had not been told already.
This was not in an artistic, Rashamon way, but rather seemed like bad editing or, worse, some kind of psychological disassociation with his mother's story that needed to be dealt with before writing the book.
At first, Mommy's story is supplemental to his memories of her from when he is a child, Later, however, one chapter tells a story from her point of view, and then the next, from James McBride's point of view, repeats the same story by recalling the circumstances of her telling that story to him.
That's not necessary.

Also, who is his "sister Jack" I officially do not understand what her relation to the family is if she is not literally his sister.
I will be sad if I find out he explained that and I missed it, when I didn't miss the many times he described his mother's name change and who her childhood best friend was.


Unfortunately, while The Color of Water has the potential to be a truly great American story, it does not live up to that potential.
McBride's ambivalence as to whether to tell his story or his mother's story sabotaged it and left me feeling uncomfortable like neither he nor his mother were well represented.
I read this for a book club, and many of the people in the club were not distracted by the way McBride told the story, To them, the fascinating life his mother led and his psychological journey in learning about her were not conflicting storylines that distracted from each other, both stories were part of united by the larger journey of him learning to forgive his mother.
I think they could stay with the story because they were rooting for the mother/son relationship, I, on the other hand, am more interested in being entertained than other people's psycohealth, It's shallow, but true. Basically, McBride failed me as an entertainer, "Given my black face and upbringing it was easy for me to flee into the anonymity of blackness, yet I felt frustrated to live in a world that considers the color of your face an immediate political statement whether you like it or not.
It took years before I began to accept the fact that the nebulous 'white mans world' wasnt as free as it looked that class, luck, religion factored in as well that many white individuals problems surpassed my own, often by a lot that all Jews are not like my grandfather and that part of me is Jewish too.
Yet the color boundary in my mind was and is the greatest hurdle, "

This is the first memoir Ive ever read, In general, the genre doesnt appeal to me because I prefer reading fiction novels for fun, But this book was recommended to me by a friend, and Im really glad I picked it up, The Color of Water celebrates the life of a remarkable woman who was born Jewish, married a black man, converted to Christianity, and had twelve mixedrace kids.
She wasnt perfect, her advice wasnt always particularly good, but she was an indisputably interesting person who was inarguably successful in raising her extraordinary children, She loved her family and sacrificed everything for them,

I dont know how most memoirs are written because I dont usually read them, What I do know is that the subject matter of this book is both enlightening and inspiring, It increases the readers understanding of Jewish culture and race/mixedrace issues all in a historical context, Unfortunately, Ruths experience with Jewish culture was mostly negative, so we dont really get to see many of its positive aspects, but James is fair in his treatment of Jews in general and I was able to learn a lot anyway about Kosher and other Jewish customs.
Where this book really shines, though, is in its discussion of race, and especially the identity crisis that James, as a mixedrace child in a racist world, had to go through.
The book is inspiring because, despite all the odds being stacked against her, Ruth McBride Jordan succeeded in escaping a culture that didnt work with who she was, flouting societal norms and finding love and happiness in a mixedrace marriage, and having twelve mixedrace children and raising them mostly on her own after her second husband passed away.
So many factors were fighting against her, but she still managed to stay afloat, She raised twelve very successful childrenmost of whom not only graduated from college but also attained advanced degrees,

Books like this have a high importance level, You dont have

to agree with the way someone lives their life in order to learn from it, Whats important is that you step into their shoes for a while, follow them around, and watch the way the world treats them and the way they interact with the world, so that you can come to understand life from a new perspective.
The more we learn about others, the more empathy we gain for people with circumstances different from our own, and the better off the world becomes.
We read this in my book club, and the consensus was: Incredible story, incredible journey, and in the passages narrated by the voice of his mother, an incredibly moving and authentic voice.
However, this seems to suffer from its form/style the author is trained as a journalist, and expanded an article he initially wrote about his mother and family into a book, and it reads journalistically instead of like a memoir.
You feel distant and collected when you want to feel wracked with the emotions, especially given what is happening in the story a young man of mixed race in a huge family ofkids grapples with finding identity his parents got together when mixed race couples were subject to physical violence for being together.
What he went through, you can only imagine, because he doesn't communicate what he felt like, what motivated him when he was younger, etc, He has processed all of this by the time of writing the book, and it's no longer raw, His mother's voice, in contrast, is blunt, unsentimental, honest not at all digested, This book made me feel lucky, lucky that James McBride and his mother were willing to share their story with the world, I wished I could be a family friend and get to know the characters event better, But since that isn't possible I'm glad that the author decided to write this memoir and share his family story so that people like me can experience it and learn from it.
What a beautiful and poignant read, This is McBride's tribute to his white mother, HIs story touches upon issues of racism, socioeconomics, identity and religion, From a young age, McBride struggled to find where he fit into this world as a black man with a white mother, At an early age, trying to find answers, he asked his mother what colour is God, Her response, "He is the color of water, " The story is juxtaposed along with his mother's, with the challenges they both faced defining themselves, What she impressed upon allchildren as being most important were education and getting 'religioned, ' Despite the circumstances, she ensured this success in her children as she saw allgraduate from University, A great read.stars. .