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50books_poc2009-05-11 08:57 pm
sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2009-05-11 08:57 pm
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#20 - "The Color of Water" by James McBride
Somehow - I don't remember how - The Miracle at Santa Ana caught my eye, and was on my mental list, at least, for this challenge. And then, browsing the biography shelves at one of the public libraries to which I belong, The Color of Water caught my eye. Santa Ana is now most definitely on my list.
Every so often you see an interview question - or an internet meme - that asks what books have stayed with a person throughout their life.
I hope that this is one of mine.
I hope that what I think I've learned from reading this book stays with me: that God is the color of water; that there's always more to someone else than you think. I hope that the lyricism, the simple beauty of McBride's writing stays with me. I hope that the image of Ruth McBride, riding her bike through Brooklyn, tall and proud and indomitable, stays with me.
The back of the book explains the bones of this memoir: James McBride's mother Ruth tells her story, of growing up an Orthodox Jew in the American South, running away from an abusive father to Harlem and the man she met there, the man she married. And while Ruth tells her story, her son tells his - a meditation on race and America; on religion and growing up; on challenge and opportunity.
Both stories are important. There isn't the one without the other. And in the end, McBride clings as strongly to Christianity as his mother comes to do, and from my point of view, that's a wonderful, inspiring thing to read.
This is the story of outcasts, and the ways they coped (and didn't). And it's the story of a mixed-race family, a mixed-faith family in America. None of it is easy, but there's also no doubt but that McBride's beautiful writing - I keep returning to the word "lyrical", as I have since the very first chapter - both smooths the path and makes it all the more poignant and painful. There is such real, penetrating truth in this book that it almost leaves me speechless (all evidence to the contrary).
Every so often you see an interview question - or an internet meme - that asks what books have stayed with a person throughout their life.
I hope that this is one of mine.
I hope that what I think I've learned from reading this book stays with me: that God is the color of water; that there's always more to someone else than you think. I hope that the lyricism, the simple beauty of McBride's writing stays with me. I hope that the image of Ruth McBride, riding her bike through Brooklyn, tall and proud and indomitable, stays with me.
The back of the book explains the bones of this memoir: James McBride's mother Ruth tells her story, of growing up an Orthodox Jew in the American South, running away from an abusive father to Harlem and the man she met there, the man she married. And while Ruth tells her story, her son tells his - a meditation on race and America; on religion and growing up; on challenge and opportunity.
Both stories are important. There isn't the one without the other. And in the end, McBride clings as strongly to Christianity as his mother comes to do, and from my point of view, that's a wonderful, inspiring thing to read.
This is the story of outcasts, and the ways they coped (and didn't). And it's the story of a mixed-race family, a mixed-faith family in America. None of it is easy, but there's also no doubt but that McBride's beautiful writing - I keep returning to the word "lyrical", as I have since the very first chapter - both smooths the path and makes it all the more poignant and painful. There is such real, penetrating truth in this book that it almost leaves me speechless (all evidence to the contrary).
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Now I've made a note. I'm really looking forward to reading this one, not least from the perspective of someone who's found in Judaism some ideas on being reconciled to religion after I left the Christianity of my childhood.
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