Theme Of Self-Identity In Color Of Water By James Mcbride

James McBride tells two stories; His mother's and his own, that show the hardships throughout both stories, although this develops all throughout the two stories this is not the main theme. The many themes, of Color Of Water, how race influenced self-identity.
McBride had realized that he was different from both black and white at an early age. He noticed that both black people and white people stared at his white mother with her black family, seeing how they started him and his family ,he couldn’t help but see “that she looked nothing like the other kid’s mother”, she had stood out in a coward of black parent waiting to pick up their kids. McBride saw the stares that she got from the other parent nevertheless he was confused,on why his mother got the stares that she gets from the other parents , he even asked why didn’t she look like another kids mother that was black.He wanted to know why his mother was so different from all the rest . McBride feelings ,of confusion swelled, to the point where he was afraid for his own mother. He “ swallowed the white man's fear of the Negro” saying that when black power was on a rise , he was afraid that they would harm this mother just because she was …show more content…
Therefor he would try to escape the ties that race had on him, he wanted a free world “To further escape from painful reality” the world without people trying to say who he was. Furthermore, McBride said “ I believed my true self a boy who lived in the mirror”, he thought he saw himself free to be whoever he wanted to be, and all he wanted was to be his true self, in a mirror.and that feel to look at himself, however, he wanted to, was a feeling he only longed for and for that he hated that part of himself, because in that mirror that little boy lived in a world without race. Without trying to be both white and black, but that wasn’t the case in his