The Color of Water

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, is the autobiography and memoir of James McBride first published in 1995; it is also a tribute to his mother, whom he calls Mommy, or Ma. The chapters alternate between James McBride's descriptions of his early life and first-person accounts of his mother Ruth's life, mostly taking place before McBride was born.

Synopsis

In The Color of Water author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth Zylska, a white woman who married Andrew Dennis McBride, a black man from North Carolina. James's childhood was spent in a chaotic household of 12 children who had neither the time nor the outlet to ponder questions of race and identity. Ruth did not want to discuss the painful details of her early life when her abusive father, "Tateh", lorded it over her sweet-tempered and meek mother, "Mameh" ["tateh" and "mameh" are Yiddish terms of endearment for "father" and "mother," roughly equivalent to "daddy and "mommy"). Ruth had cut all ties with her Jewish family, as they had essentially disowned her when she married James's father.

Born Ruchel Zylska to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland, Ruth arrived in the United States when she was two years old. won the 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Literary Excellence, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year, The New York Women's Agenda's first book for "New York City Reads Together" and has sold more than 1.5 million copies. It has been published in 16 languages and in more than 20 countries.

References