Children search for their identity from the time their mothers birthed them through adolescence and sometimes into adulthood. They wonder about their impact on the world and how they define their character from their parents heritage as well as their own life experiences. When conflicting races and religions enter a child’s life, they muddle and hinder the child’s search for identity. As a child to adulthood, James McBride searches for an identity that seems clouded by a mother’s secrets and a mixed racial background. The world around James McBride in The Color of Water challenges his identity and the challenge strengthens his newfound identity in adulthood. In James McBride’s childhood, he questions his mother and himself about his identity.
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The intense stares that the black mothers gave Ruth due to her differences in color and Ruth picking up an African American kid, indicates the extreme disdain they carry for Ruth. Ruth dodging all of James’s questions only muddle the child’s identity even further. Not only does James wonder why his mother prefers african americans over caucasians, when she is caucasian. He also wonders why she disowns her race and refers to herself as “light-skinned” (19). At the time, James misses his racial description as mixed, affecting him as a child due to him not belonging to either whites or …show more content…
His identity changes from adolescence as he incorporates his race back into his life, not embarrassed about his white mother or black father, but proud of them. He incorporates the Lutheran face into his life that held him strong through the death of his father, brother, and other tragedies. The race and religion he lost in adolescence, but he finds them again in adulthood while keeping the independence he learned as a teenager. His experiences with race and religion middled his identity through childhood and adolescence, but that muddling only made his identity as an adult stronger as he continues to stay true to himself and comfortable in his own skin instead of worrying about what people will think of his mother. His identity as an adult as mixed race, lutheran, writer and musician, goes through challenges when he again asks Ruth about her past and she reveals her Jewish faith as a child. This finding made James curious, but does not challenge his identity as he knows who he is. James figures out that he could never be like his father; “But everyone can’t be like Bob, or Rev. McBride, or even Ruth McBride. People are different. Times change” (253). James realizes that race and religion help define his identity, but his identity does not revolve around his race, his mother,
The intense stares that the black mothers gave Ruth due to her differences in color and Ruth picking up an African American kid, indicates the extreme disdain they carry for Ruth. Ruth dodging all of James’s questions only muddle the child’s identity even further. Not only does James wonder why his mother prefers african americans over caucasians, when she is caucasian. He also wonders why she disowns her race and refers to herself as “light-skinned” (19). At the time, James misses his racial description as mixed, affecting him as a child due to him not belonging to either whites or …show more content…
His identity changes from adolescence as he incorporates his race back into his life, not embarrassed about his white mother or black father, but proud of them. He incorporates the Lutheran face into his life that held him strong through the death of his father, brother, and other tragedies. The race and religion he lost in adolescence, but he finds them again in adulthood while keeping the independence he learned as a teenager. His experiences with race and religion middled his identity through childhood and adolescence, but that muddling only made his identity as an adult stronger as he continues to stay true to himself and comfortable in his own skin instead of worrying about what people will think of his mother. His identity as an adult as mixed race, lutheran, writer and musician, goes through challenges when he again asks Ruth about her past and she reveals her Jewish faith as a child. This finding made James curious, but does not challenge his identity as he knows who he is. James figures out that he could never be like his father; “But everyone can’t be like Bob, or Rev. McBride, or even Ruth McBride. People are different. Times change” (253). James realizes that race and religion help define his identity, but his identity does not revolve around his race, his mother,