Despite hardship, poverty, and suffering, Ruth sent all 12 of her children to college. At 17, Ruth fled the South, landed in Harlem, married a black man in 1941, founded a church, was twice widowed and raised 12 children in New York City. Ruth was born in Poland and raised in Suffolk, Va, the daughter of an itinerant rabbi and a loving, disabled mother who spoke no English. It tells the story of James McBride and his white, Jewish mother Ruth. To date it has sold sold more than 2.1 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 16 languages. Water doesn’t have a color.” In time, as McBride describes in the book, he grew to realize his mother was white – and to understand her courage in undertaking life as “the only White person in sight.” His mother’s race and his own biracial heritage, prompted questions of McBride’s own racial identity his book offers a richly nuanced picture of how fluid and textured identity ultimately is.This fascinating, superbly written memoir was a New York Times bestseller for two years. In a conversation when he was a child, McBride recalls asking his mother what color God is, to which she replied “God is the color of water. The Color of Water takes its title from a conversation McBride had with his mother, who, he writes, would not acknowledge her whiteness to her curious son. McBride first wrote about his mother in an essay for the Boston Globe enthusiastic responses from readers encouraged him to expand the work into a book. All twelve of her children went on to attend college, and most of them also completed graduate studies. After her first husband died, Ruth McBride went on to marry again and with her second husband, also a black man, have four more children.

The story of life lived on both sides of the color line, McBride’s memoir gives equal space to the voice of his white mother (who was disowned by her Orthodox Jewish family for marrying a black man) and his own questions about navigating black identity as a mixed-race person.īorn in 1957, McBride was the youngest of eight children born to Ruth and Andrew McBride, a deeply religious couple who had founded a black church in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Award in 1997 for his memoir, The Color of Water, James McBride is a jazz musician as well as a writer, and the jazz tradition of complementary solos can be seen in his written work.

The color of water mcbride