Summary: The Color Of Water By James Mcbride

The Color of Water by James McBride, a memoir about McBride’s life growing up as a black man with a white Jewish mother and the life of his mother, Ruth, growing up as a Jewish immigrant and the show the struggles that came with both upbringings. The memoir is written through two narrators; James and Ruth, whose narrations alter every other chapter. They both reveal information from their childhoods until the two stories eventually merge. This type of narration helps to compare and contrast their childhoods, and show how Ruth’s past affected her morals and character. This form of narration allows the audience to learn about the mother’s past while James is also learning about his mother’s past, and makes for a more interesting and compelling …show more content…
For instance, both James and Ruth are subject to varying degrees of racism and prejudice in their lives. Ruth, as a child, faced ridicule and exclusion as a Jew living in the south, and then later as a white woman with black children who lived in a black neighborhood during the Civil Rights movement. Children in her school would refuse to be around her due to her religious background and strangers on the street would shout unwarranted slurs at her, ranging from, “look at that white bitch,” to, “nigger lover,” due to the color of her kid’s skin. Growing up, James witnessed the unjust stereotyping and harsh treatment of black people in his family and his neighborhood. An additional example would be how both Ruth and James struggle to strike a compromise between past and present. Both want to hold onto certain parts of their young lives, and both wish to forget others. Ruth must reconcile her immigrant culture and religious background, while James must learn to move past his prior confusion with race. Both James and Ruth wish to pay their respects to their pasts, and perhaps learn from them, but ultimately want to move on and find their own way of