Color of Water

James McBride's book, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother is at first most, a tribute to his mother's tenacity to educate her children. It is a recognition of his mother's struggles to keep her life and her struggles from impeding her children's futures.

His mother was raised an Orthodox Jew in the South. Her childhood was fairly horrendous and her father although a Rabbi, was an abuser. The very fact that she escaped this environment, moved to New York and created a new life for herself among the Black Baptist community is pretty remarkable. She married and between being widowed and then remarried, had twelve children. The title comes from when her son asks her what color is God. She replies that God is the color of water - always changing...

McBride is proud to be her son, and it is reflected in his book. This book is written well and proves that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. It is a selective memoir. The reader really only gets to hear about what he and what his mother reveals. And I think the author's struggles to bring this much of his mother's past out of her, reflects on his determination to tell her story.

I have discussed this book in conversation with others who have read it and have gotten mixed responses. Some have not liked the "character" of the mother. They say she should of not of had so many children when she was poor, and she that she abandoned her own mother and sister. But I think that anyone who looks at the time period this woman was in, and the limited choices that were available to her, they will realize that above all, this woman was a survivor. And sometimes to survive one must do "horrible" things in order to move on. These choices may be reprehensible in hindsight, but how do we know we might not have done the same? The human instinct to survive is not always a "pretty" one. A fascinating look inside an interesting life.