Book Review The Color of Water

Eric Gauthier

Mrs. Meadows

English E-F

December 5, 2011

The Color of Water -Thoughts and Review

 

The Color of Water by James McBride is his Tribute as a black man to his white mother. This memoir is an emotional journey of what it is like growing up in New York in a time of racial segregation and injustice. This book is organized by going back and forth between James’s childhood and his mother's In my opinion this is a very profound book that is about a family of thirteen kids barely making it through life. They lived in the Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn.  Due to his surroundings as a youth, James gets pulled into things like gangs and drugs, but later on turns away from violence and fights and starts music and writing. 

  Having a white mother as a child he thinks nothing of it, but soon begins to, as he gets older, wonder who he is, but first to know this he must know who his mother is. Every time he asks about her past she tells him to mind his own business. The reason she hides her past is because it is her only way to keep going because her past is to painful to bring back into her mind. Her childhood was harsh and bitter and she was watched over by her strict and careless father Tateh. He does not care at all for her crippled mother and does not help her. All he cares about is money he makes in his store which he forces Ruth and Dee-Dee to work in for him. Ruth is the name that James’ mother used, but she used to be known as Rachel. It shows how cruel a culture the world has evolved into not accepting anything different or unique.

   I think that James has learned about himself that no matter what background you are from you can still be a success, but not without a little help from his mother.  Ruth is the person, even in her own sorrow, who helped him become a journalist, a writer, a composer, and saxophonist. 

Ruth is Jewish in her childhood and turns to, and accepts Jesus as her savior with her first husband Dennis McBride. She uses prayer to help her continue. She went to church every day with Dennis to hear Rev. Brown preach the messages of the Lord. When Rev. Brown dies Dennis and Ruth founded the New Brown Memorial Church. James has understood that humor can be a cure to a large family with many siblings and that even though sometimes there are fights, arguments, and disagreements that you still have to stick together. His mother always told him never to share anything about himself with others. 

  It was as if she was trying to create the perfect world within the house that she never had as a child. She ruled over all. She was the queen of the house and she always valued education. She would say “Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody.”    

I really liked this line because it shows how much education is important and it is so concise an is straight to the point because if you don’t educate yourself nobody will recognize as a significant contributor to the world’s ideas. Basically I’m trying to say if you don’t educate yourself nobody will take you seriously either. 

He shows how she needs to stay active to stay alive and to keep moving through the challenges of life. James eventually drops out of school.  Education was one of the most important things for her children, for them to become someone and to find their way into the world. They luckily do not let this get in their way, the children all successfully go to college and university. The book shows a struggle against authority poverty the fight against segregation and of a mother single-handily taking care of a whole family. They don’t understand, while being children, why color or race matters or why they should not be integrated. James realizes that his mother had real strength, power and courage to have made it through a tragic childhood and motherhood, but was soon healed by her family as they grew older and made her proud.