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Identity In The Color Of Water By James Mcbride

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While there can never be one single story, the memoir, The Color of Water by James McBride, shares the struggles of growing up as an African American in the 1960s and onward. This memoir is James’s tribute to his white mother Ruth, giving up her heritage and old life to marry a black man, and start a new family. He devotes himself to learning about his mother’s old life and true identity, and in the process gets closer to finding his own. Ruth put James in situations that not a lot of poor black kids were in back in that time, involving: race, religion, social location, and identity. These factors ultimately formed the way James thinks, and James as a man all together. James’s mother plays a paramount role towards James’s perspective on the …show more content…

The schools in the area that James and his family lived in were far from Ruth’s minimum expectations, therefore none of the kids were sent there. James says “Mommy was for anything involving the improvement of our education and condition.” Ruth put hours of time getting her kids into better schools, eventually finding one for James, which was around a three and a half hour round trip. At this predominantly white school, James experienced discrimination, being stereotyped, and racism on a daily basis. James however, was not able to recognise what was happening to him, as his mother never talked about race with him. Ruth, being the only white person in the family, never wanted to speak of anything involving race, because it made her uncomfortable, even though it was a vital lesson for her children to learn. Instead of learning about racism from his mother, James had to learn it from experience. In an attempt to finally fit in and be liked, he gave in to the peer pressure formed by his classmates' stereotypes about him being able to dance, and tried it in front of his whole class. James’s recollection of this moment describes one of the first times when he recognizes what was really happening to him. “Happy to feel accepted, to

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In the memoir the Color of Water, James McBride spends most of the time finding his true identity. To understand his inner confusion and turmoil, he had a need to understand his mother’s past. James McBride takes an epic life quest to discover and learn more about his heritage in his memoir. As the book begins, the author has a curiosity and was consumed with the need of learning about his mother and her past.

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The Color of Water, a memoir written by James McBride, describes the struggle James experienced growing up in a poor family with eleven other siblings while going through a racial identity crisis. Throughout the book, the chapters alternate from James’ point of view to his mother’s point of view, both individuals accounting their difficult childhoods. These different perspectives come together and make one lucid piece of writing. During the course of the book, the reader will learn that James encountered many obstacles in his life. However, these difficulties molded James and made him grow as an individual.

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In James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, he relates the narrative of his struggle to understand and accept himself as a multiracial person dealing with his mother's terrible past. McBride's analysis of these themes demonstrates that self-awareness and family harmony are founded on embracing and reconciling one's many aspects of heritage. The book reveals, utilizing his experiences and his mother Ruth's observations, that personal and familial peace can only be attained by completely recognizing one's mixed heritage. McBride's struggle with his racial identity is an important aspect of his quest to understand himself. His mother's ambiguous responses to his refer to race, such as her statement, "You are a human being."

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In McBride’s The Color of Water, James McBride the narrator tells a story of his own past and his mother, Ruth McBride’s past. Throughout the book James was conflicted with his racial identity due to being half African-American and half Jewish and the environment and society in the 1960s. On the other hand, James’s mother Ruth was also conflicted in finding her own racial identity, family and religion.

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Ruth demonstrates that lack of education degrades your self-worth as a person, and will effect someone to fail in life. Ruth encourages school because each of her children have their own control over how they participate, thus giving them the opportunity to succeed. Education is a concept that race has no part in, and is why Ruth highlights that education trumps race. It does not matter if a person is white or black, if they are educated they can be someone with a purpose in life. As a result, James pursues educating himself, just as his mother demands: “College was my way out” (188).

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In the penultimate chapter of the book, James reflects on his life. He hated that his skin color seemed to determine everything about his identity in the eyes of the world. Yet, his mixed heritage allowed him to witness that black people as they proclaimed that white people had it

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Throughout the book, The Color of Water, the author- James McBride depicts how females in mid-1900’s were experienced “otherness” in the society. As Dr. Zuleyka Zevallas states in “What is Otherness?” that, “otherness...is controlled by groups that have greater political power. He also says, otherness is the construction of social identities which are “often thought as being natural or inhale…” In other words, the society is controlled by a group or groups of people who have greater political power.

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James relied heavily on his mother during his childhood but as he grew older he realized that he struggled so much because he never knew where she fit in. “It took many years to find out who she was, partly because I never knew who I was. It wasn’t so much a question of searching for myself as it was my own decision not to look. As a boy, I was confused about issues of race but did not consider myself deprived or unhappy. As a young man I had no time or money or inclination to look beyond my own poverty to discover what identity was.”

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