the color of water a black man's tribute

Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University.

Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college-and most through graduate school. 'God is the color of water,' Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriaâ‰¥ her fragile, handicapped mother her cruel, sexually-abusive father and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion-and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. 'Mommy,' a fiercely protective woman with 'dark eyes full of pep and fire,' herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in 'orchestrated chaos' with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.

Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared 'light-skinned' woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a James Brown biography.

The color of water a black man's tribute