The Color of Water
How long would you withhold your heritage from your children? That is the dilemma Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, or better known as Ruth McBride-Jordan had to come to grips with. In James McBride's book The Color of Water, McBride chronicles his life, and finally learns of his mother's history. Although the book is an uplifting family story, Ruth McBride did a disservice to her children by not informing them of their Jewish heritage. I have come to believe this by how James McBride had racial identity crisis for a period of his childhood years, how James never really knew whom his mother was. James McBride always had questions about his ethnicity, but his mother always turned the question into something else. Even though the whole world around Ruth McBride-Jordan focused on race, she was satisfied not talking about it, "Matters involving race and identity she ignored."(pg.9) However, not talking about ethnicity left James in a crisis, he didn't know what he was. He would constantly ask his mother about identity, but his mother would change the question around, 'I asked Mommy why she didn't look like the other mothers.' ' Because I'm not them,' she said.
Through Ruth McBride's evasive tactics, James' never really knew his mother until he interviewed her. Through most of James' life all he ever knew about his mother was she was light-skinned and, "' My mother died many, many years ago... My father, he was a fox.'"(pg.24) He didn't know where she was from, why she was white, what ethnicity she was? He didn't even know what his mother's maiden name was until he was in college. James came to an overwhelming point in his relationship with his mother, " It was a devastating realization, coming to grips with the fact that all your life you had never really known the person you loved the most."(pg.266) Ruth McBride had kept her life bottled up inside her, and her children never had a clue of what she really was. For James' whole life he never knew his mother. The woman that has been supporting him his whole life was a mystery. All he knew about his mother was that she was mom. When Ruth finally did the interview James thought of his mother's life as history, " Imagine, if you will, five thousand years of Jewish history landing in your lap in the space of months."(pg.269) Ruth McBride's life was like a history lesson about his mother. All the information about his mother that he so desperately wanted to know was put into face, and it was massive. Hearing Hebrew words like "Tateh" and "rov" coming out of his mother's mouth shocked James. Though he was shocked, James was finally at peace knowing what the other half of James McBride was. James McBride was a, Black man with a Jewish Soul."(pg.273) Educate your mind. School is important...'(pg.13) For most of James McBride's life, he was kept in the dark about his other ethnicity. His urge to learn more about himself had become a ba
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1183
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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