Recently, the Nashville Public Library did a big series on the book The Color of Water by James McBride. The subtitle of the book is “A black man’s tribute to his white mother”.
I have to admit that I kind of reluctantly picked up the book because the description, both on the book jacket and online didn’t sound terribly compelling.
Well, now that I’ve read it, I just have to say that the book jacket needs a serious rewrite.
This is a great book. You see, Jame’s McBride’s mother wasn’t just a “white mother” who went through some hard times. She had a larger-than-life personality, she was a victim of abuse, she was subject to intense racism herself, and she reared 12 kids in a housing project in New York City and ALL of them went on to earn degrees and advanced degrees (they kinda actually made me feel like a slacker).
McBride’s mother came from a strict Jewish family with a patriarchal, soulless father. She grew up as one of a handful of Jews in a racist town in Virginia. When she chose to marry a black man, she was extricated from her family permanently.
So, not only did she experience a very real form of racism as a child for being jewish, but as an adult as she lived in a mostly black culture in New York City. The kids that her marriage(s) produced meanwhile, also experienced racism as racially mixed people. This book has layers upon layers of perspective, people!
What was interesting to me, was, growing up in Iowa, America’s problems with racism was mostly comprised of the white/black divide in my mind. Iowa did not pose a large swath of cross-cultural, multi-ethnicities. And I was pretty naive.
Then, the summer before my sophomore year of college, I went to New York and became a nanny for the summer. The family I worked for was a wonderful, warm Jewish family consisting of single mother and her two bright kids. Honestly, I think they were the first Jews that I had met. Besides our differences in beliefs, I didn’t think much of our ethnic disparities at the time. Then I started noticing that they, along with all Jewish people, even in the 1990’s in New York City, experienced racism. I remember once a boy threw rocks at the sweet girl I nannied. I remember another time when some neighborhood kids threw a firecracker over their fence, landing on and burning up their pool tarp (luckily not catching the house on fire).
I asked the kids why people did this and they kind of shrugged and said “because we’re Jewish”. And in that moment, my eyes were opened just a little bit.
Now, living in the south in a large city like Nashville, which is quickly becoming a haven for refugees throughout the world, and which already boasts a much more colorful demographic than my native north, I am still learning and growing in my understanding, as a result of that.
I highly recommend The Color of Water by James McBride. It is beautifully written, inspiring and educational on a humanity kind of level and is the kind of book you look forward to reading at the end of the day.