The Color of Water
James McBride (1996)
“A Black man searches for his identity — and discovers his white Jewish mother's buried past — in one of the most unexpected and moving memoirs of the twentieth century.”
At a Glance
James McBride, the Black son of a white Jewish woman who refused to discuss her past, grows up in a large, poor family in Brooklyn and later Harlem, struggling with questions of race and identity. As an adult, he investigates his mother Ruth's hidden life — her Orthodox Jewish upbringing in Suffolk, Virginia, an abusive father, an abortion, a Black church she loved, and her eventual conversion to Christianity. The memoir interweaves James's search for himself with Ruth's story of self-reinvention, arriving at a portrait of a family sustained by faith, education, and a mother's ferocious will.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The Color of Water spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list and was among the most-assigned memoirs in American high schools and colleges through the late 1990s and 2000s. It introduced a generation of readers to the complexities of biracial and cross-cultural family identity before those subjects had mainstream cultural visibility. Ruth McBride Jordan lived to see herself celebrated, which she largely found embarrassing.
Diction Profile
Informal and direct in both voices — McBride's journalistic clarity mixed with Ruth's oral storytelling; occasional Yiddish-inflected phrasing
Low-to-moderate