The Color of Water

Ruth refuses to discuss her past; James introduces himself and his family, describes Ruth's silence about her origins, and establishes the memoir's central question: who is this woman who raised us?

James describes Ruth's tireless work habits and her famous bicycle, which she rode through city streets into old age; Ruth begins telling the story of her childhood in Suffolk, Virginia, her father Fishel's store, and the Black community that became more home to her than her own.

James describes his adolescent confusion about race during the Black Power movement — observing Black pride while his mother is visibly white; Ruth describes the texture of her Jewish upbringing, its strictures, and her growing sense of alienation from her family.

James describes his siblings — their varied paths, the household dynamics in Red Hook, Brooklyn — while Ruth tells the story of Peter, the Black man she loved in Suffolk, the pregnancy, and the abortion that ended everything.

Ruth describes her arrival in New York, her conversion to Christianity, and her marriage to Andrew Dennis McBride; James recounts what he knows of his father Dennis, who died when James was young, and what Dennis's church meant to his mother.

James describes his stepfather Hunter Jordan — his steadiness, his love for Ruth's children, his own troubles — and reflects on Ruth's refusal to be defined by race or tradition; Ruth describes the texture of her second marriage and the years in Louisville Gardens.

McBride makes the trip to Suffolk, Virginia, to find the remnants of his mother's past — interviewing elderly Black residents who remember Shilsky's store, finding his grandfather's grave, and tracing the geography of Ruth's buried life.

James takes stock of all twelve siblings — their achievements, their various lives, what Ruth's choices produced — while Ruth reflects on her Jewish identity, what she kept and what she abandoned, and what it means to have been born one thing and to have become another.