The Color of Water
How long would you withhold your heritage from your children? That is the dilemma Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, or better known as Ruth McBride-Jordan had to come to grips with. In James McBride's book The Color of Water, McBride chronicles his life, and finally learns of his mother's history. Although the book is an uplifting family story, Ruth McBride did a disservice to her children by not informing them of their Jewish heritage. I have come to believe this by how James McBride had racial identity crisis for a period of his childhood years, how James never really knew whom his mother was. James McBride always had questions about his ethnicity, but his mother always turned the question into something else. Even though the whole world around Ruth McBride-Jordan focused on race, she was satisfied not talking about it, "Matters involving race and identity she ignored."(pg.9) However, not talking about ethnicity left James in a crisis, he didn't know what he was. He would constantly ask his mother about identity, but his mother would change the question around, 'I asked Mommy why she didn't look like the other mothers.' ' Because I'm not them,' she said.
He wanted to know why he was African American, and why his mother was white? To James he had to solve this looming problem, " I had to find out more about who I was, and in order to find out who I was, I had to find out who my mother was. James was unaware of the ethnicity of his mother until he was ten years old. 266) James McBride couldn't live his live not knowing the other part of him. For James' whole life he never knew his mother. That's what James McBride had to live with until he was in his thirties. The woman that has been supporting him his whole life was a mystery. All he knew about his mother was that she was mom. James came to an overwhelming point in his relationship with his mother, " It was a devastating realization, coming to grips with the fact that all your life you had never really known the person you loved the most. Until James was able to make an assessment of his own identity, he didn't know what his ethnicity was. 273) Wondering what you are for half your life isn't a healthy way to live your life.
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