By: James McBride

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By James McBride
The Color of Water

• A Black Mans Tribute to His White Mother

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Interesting Facts

• James was working as a tenor sax sideman with
  jazz legend Jimmy Scott when he penned this book,
  which was written in hotel rooms, vans, airports
  and on New York City buses. He had been a
  journalist for eight years when at age 30, he
  quit his job as a Washington Post feature writer
  and moved to New York to pursue music. He slept
  on mattresses, played in blues bands, taught ESL
  to Polish refugees, and played weddings on Long
  Island. While struggling through self-described
  "unsettled angst" he came to realize that the key
  to his search lay behind the story of the most
  interesting person he'd ever known in his life --
  and the person he loved the most -- his own
  mother. He set about interviewing Ruth McBride
  Jordan and searching out her mysterious past, a
  process that took 14 years and resulted in a book
  that is regarded as a landmark work and an
  American classic. Says McBride of The Color of
  Water "If I had known so many people were going
  to read that book, I would've written a better
  book." The Color of Water is also available in
  12 other language editions.

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Chapters 1Dead 2 The Bicycle 3 Kosher 4 Black
Power 5 The Old Testament 6 The New Testament 7
Sam 8 Brothers and Sisters 9Shul 10School 11 Boys
12Daddy 13New York 14 Chicken Mar 15Graduation
16Driving 17Lost in Harlem 18Lost in Delaware 19
The Promise 20 Old Man Shilskv 21A Bird Who Flies
22 A Jew Discovered 23 Dennis 24 New Brown 25
Finding Ruthie

• Dead
• I'm dead.
• You want to talk about my family and here I been
  dead to them for fifty years. Leave me alone.
  Don't bother me. They want no parts of me and me
  I don't want no parts of them. Hurry up and get
  this interview over with. I want to watch Dallas.
  See, my family, if you had a been part of them,
  you wouldn't have time for this foolishness, your
  roots, so to speak. You'd be better off watching
  the Three Stooges than to interview them, like to
  go interview my father, forget it. He'd have a
  heart attack if he saw you, He's dead now anyway,
  or if not he's 150 years old.

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Main Characters

• Father Fishel Shilsky an Orthodox rabbi escaped
  from the Russian army and snuck over the Polish
  border and married Hudis in an arranged
  marriage. He was hard as a rock. Cold hearted and
  very strict and fierce less.
• Mother Hudis Shilsky was the exact opposite of
  him, gentle and meek. She is from Poland and she
  had Polio. It paralyzed her left side. She would
  struggle taking care of family. She was nearly
  blind in her left eye and walked with a severe
  limp
• Ruchel Dwajra Zylska was Ruths Polish name
  daughter of Hudis and Fishel. they came to
  America and grew up in the Southern United
  States, ran away to and changed it to Rachel
  Deborah Shilsky. After running away to Harlem and
  falling in love with a black man she married and
  is known to be called. Ruth McBride Jordan., and
  is now founded in a Baptist church, The Jewish
  religion and Ruths cold blooded family led Ruth
  to run away. She quotes There were too many
  rules to follow, too many forbiddens and "you
  can'ts" and "you mustn'ts," but does anybody say
  they love you?
• Ruths 12 Children who all grew up in all-black
  projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

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Plot Summary

• Ruth McBride Jordan struggles with her first
  pregnancy and lead her to run away and became
  disowned by her family. She fell in love and
  married a black man, he showed her affection and
  emotions that she never felt while living with
  her own family. He opened possibilities for her
  to come to know a different religion where
  acceptance was a virtue Baptism. Ruth knew she
  didnt fit in with her cold rigid family but she
  did love her mother. Mammeth was the only one
  she really looked up too. She wanted to be the
  same idol for her children but just stronger and
  headstrong. She raises her 12 children in Harlem,
  facing criticism from both races. All the
  children faced hard times while in school, shared
  clothes, had tough times with splitting meals.
  Ruth she was a hard worker and the strong love
  for her children lead her to set paths to sent
  them all through college. She would not accept no
  failure, she became as well ironhanded type where
  she would make all her children study study
  study. She felt it was for a good cause, even
  though she was mean like hard sturdy type of
  woman she expressed her love in a different way.
  All her children now, see the true warrior their
  mother is and are all successful careers.

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Overall Critique

• I enjoyed the book, It grabbed my attention
  from the beginning. Its overall a sad story how
  a young woman loses her family her family is so
  close-minded but couldnt even come to accept
  their own family as a whole. Ruth just easily
  became open-minded so fast and knew she didnt
  belong and yearned for more. Her life just
  changes, when She came to know what love is from
  a man who is the total opposite from her. It is
  admiring how she accepts a colored man and
  accepts, and comes to term to know how people are
  and what to accept in life. It is just touching,
  how James McBride, feels the same way in his
  younger years yearning for soul searching and
  comes to terms with himself and praises his
  mother for all her hard work and resistance.