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50books_poc2009-07-08 01:49 pm
vegablack62.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2009-07-08 01:49 pm
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The Color of Water by James McBride -- 6/50
The Color of Water: A black man's tribute to his white mother.
James McBride.
James McBride's mother, a white Jewish girl who grew up in the Segregated South, went over to the black side, as she put it. She had a romance with a young black man at a time and in a place where that could mean death and ultimately moved to Harlem, married a black man in 1942, embraced his faith, married another after the first died and raised twelve black children. A strong personality who described herself as light skinned, she was a woman of faith and practicality and driving belief in education who raised her children to see themselves as black Christians in a largely hostile white world and pushed them to succeed in that world.
McBride places his own memories of growing up next to his mother's monologue about her own life. This is very effective. Both stories are interesting and engaging and illuminate each other, encouraging thoughtful reflection on race, class, religion, identity, family, and the effects of abuse. I loved the depiction of both McBride's father and stepfather. The nuances in McBride's picture of his mother's family that he gained by his research was also quite interesting. The book is full of powerful personalities that I wanted to know more about, especially his older brothers and sisters and their activities for the civil rights movement.
There's a lot I could quote from the book, but I found one paragraph that shines a quick light on the way white and black relate in this country and on the life and personality of McBride's mother herself. She had been hurt by the new minister of the church that she and her husband had founded forty years before. He had "treated her like an outsider, a foreigner, a white person, greeting her after the service with the obsequious smile and false sincerity that blacks reserve for white folks when they don't know them well or don't trust them, or both.... Ma was so hurt she resolved never to go back there again, a promise she broke again and again, braving the two-hour subway and train commute from her home in Ewing, New Jersey, to sit in church, the only white person in the room, a stranger in the very church that she started in her living room."
I thought this was a great read.
ETA: I found this quote on Wikipedia which amused me: "I thought it would be received well in the black community but it's sold much better in the white Jewish community," he said. "Most of my readers are middle-age, white, Jewish women...."
James McBride.
James McBride's mother, a white Jewish girl who grew up in the Segregated South, went over to the black side, as she put it. She had a romance with a young black man at a time and in a place where that could mean death and ultimately moved to Harlem, married a black man in 1942, embraced his faith, married another after the first died and raised twelve black children. A strong personality who described herself as light skinned, she was a woman of faith and practicality and driving belief in education who raised her children to see themselves as black Christians in a largely hostile white world and pushed them to succeed in that world.
McBride places his own memories of growing up next to his mother's monologue about her own life. This is very effective. Both stories are interesting and engaging and illuminate each other, encouraging thoughtful reflection on race, class, religion, identity, family, and the effects of abuse. I loved the depiction of both McBride's father and stepfather. The nuances in McBride's picture of his mother's family that he gained by his research was also quite interesting. The book is full of powerful personalities that I wanted to know more about, especially his older brothers and sisters and their activities for the civil rights movement.
There's a lot I could quote from the book, but I found one paragraph that shines a quick light on the way white and black relate in this country and on the life and personality of McBride's mother herself. She had been hurt by the new minister of the church that she and her husband had founded forty years before. He had "treated her like an outsider, a foreigner, a white person, greeting her after the service with the obsequious smile and false sincerity that blacks reserve for white folks when they don't know them well or don't trust them, or both.... Ma was so hurt she resolved never to go back there again, a promise she broke again and again, braving the two-hour subway and train commute from her home in Ewing, New Jersey, to sit in church, the only white person in the room, a stranger in the very church that she started in her living room."
I thought this was a great read.
ETA: I found this quote on Wikipedia which amused me: "I thought it would be received well in the black community but it's sold much better in the white Jewish community," he said. "Most of my readers are middle-age, white, Jewish women...."
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