Reread Book Club: The Color of Water
Book: The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
Author: James McBride
Times Read: 2
I picked up a copy of this book in a thrift store recently. I remember first reading it when I was in college. This is a memoir about the author’s white mother, Ruth McBride. For most of his life, she told him that she was a light-skinned black woman, when in fact, she was a white woman who was disowned by her Orthodox Jewish family when she married a Black man.
When James asked his mother about why she was different looking from her children, she would say only, “I’m light-skinned.”
When he asked if he was black or white, she said, “You’re a human being.”
And what about God?
“God is the color of water.”
McBride’s writing style was so engaging that I finished the book in a few days. One of the common themes I didn’t catch onto when I first read the book was Ruth’s constant need to always be moving and changing because of all the secrets and chaos her life became so embedded in. She was escaping Virginia for New York for Delaware and back to New York while raising 12 biracial children as a twice-widowed, Jewish-turned-Christian white woman in near poverty in a racist society, and it totally made sense to me. At the beginning of the book, we see Ruth riding a bike, and it symbolizes her need to just get away to deal with the stresses of her life.
All the constant movement and chaos growing up in this household was also stressful for the author, who said that he didn’t give him much of a chance to think about his own racial identity until later in life when he wrote this book.
But she was able to adapt to every situation. Water adapts in the same way as it is colorless in small amounts and it adapts the color it is reflected from light in larger quantities.
I am so glad I picked up this book again!