Review: The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been planning to read this book for a really long time, since I read a review about a black man who learns his mother was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I didn't know who James McBride was at the time, and so his reputation didn't draw me in.

What intrigues me more is the idea of identity. Who are we, and how does our past, even the past we don't know about, shape us? And race, this thing that permeates our society, how does it shape us? I think I've been interested in history and culture since I started reading all the books on Hawaiian history when I was in second grade and living in Honolulu. (What an exotic history, I thought, and I began to seek out other books on culture.)

More recently, I am learning that my view of race and culture is shaped by my own color, which I ignored for so long. I was raised in a white-normative world. Doctors, politicians, heroes were mostly white. Newspaper articles and crime reports in the past would identify color if a suspect was black or Hispanic but not if the suspect were white. There are other things, but that's enough for this review.

At any rate, I came across an article by McBride titled "Hip Hop Planet," and it reminded me of this book, and when Amazon put it on special (only $1.99), I snatched it up.

The book offered a unique look at America, one that allowed me to see beyond my own experiences, through the eyes of two narrators.

McBride tells his story and alternates with his mother telling her story.

His story focuses on what it is like to grow up as a black man. He is about the same age as I am, and so as he tells his story, I think about my view of race in those days, how invisible black people were, and how I never really thought about that. I assumed that racism was over, that segregation was over, that everyone was equal, and I never questioned those assumptions. Reading his accounts reminded me of my own childhood. He thought about race all the time. He lived in black neighborhoods, but his mother was white and was therefore suspect. He couldn't ignore race like I could.

His mother tells the story of growing up as an Orthodox Jew in the South. She never quite fit in. She wasn't black, and she wasn't white, at least by the standards of that time. She also didn't have the privilege of ignoring race.

Seeing the world through new perspectives allows me to expand my world, and that's one of the reasons I read.

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