One of My Favorite Books (SSR)

One of my favorite books that I read a couple of years back would be an autobiography called The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride. I remember reading this book in the 7th grade, when my sister had just finished reading it in high school. The book talks about a boy who grew up in a neighborhood and time period where having a white mother or having some portion of white ancestry while still being an African American was seen as odd to many people. James' mother was a Jewish woman born and raised in Suffolk, Virginia where she came from a strict Jewish home that forbid her from having relations with some races, including Black. James grew up always feeling as if he was different and he was always fearful of his mother for some reason, but as he got older he felt like he didn't know her. His mother was very quiet about her life and was sort of mysterious about her past. James' mother had a past where she had a relationship with a black man (which was unheard of in 1942) & she got pregnant by him. She kept the pregnancy a secret and had to run away from home to an aunt in New York when her mother found out. She ended up aborting the unborn child, but married a black man named Andrew McBride. Ruth & Andrew had 8 kids together, but by the time Ruth could deliver her last child from him (James), health complications (lung cancer) occurred and he died, leaving Ruth in turmoil and suffrage on raising 8 children by herself. She later remarried another black man named Hunter Jordan, whom she had 4 more children with, giving James a father figure to look up to. Health complications occurred to his step father and soon after he died as well. This left James feeling lost like his mother had felt after she lost her first husband. The book alternates between chapters from James point of view of his upbringing from childhood to adulthood, & his mother to his mothers point of view of her own personal upbringing from life in Virginia to life as a single mother & widow twice. James finally decided to figure out his racial identity since it was always a question to him he could never find an answer to. As a child he remembers asking his mother many times why her skin was so different from his & she would never answer the question. People in the neighborhood found her strange for some reason and she never spoke of her Jewish side or of her family at all. Throughout this book I got to see life from both Ruth's perspective as a Jewish girl where there many rules to abide by and then the sacrifices made for her own happiness regardless of the consequences, & life from James' perspective as a guy who lived his life not knowing who he was, who his mother was, & where he came from. This book is just beyond amazing and I compared it to the autobiography of Malcolm X, because these two men each share similar qualities in which they have a black father, & a white mother in time periods where it was unthinkable to even have seen relations between those two races. These two men each have to struggle to find themselves and see just where they belong in society. Although Malcolm X endured far worse than James McBride, these two books correlate to things that even now in this day and age, the world is still trying to cope from. Which is why I love this book so much, because it not only intrigues me, but it is based on a true story and there's not one thing in the book that James leaves out about his life. Also, the fact that I can see the point of view literally in first person from his mothers life as well just makes it all the worthwhile of reading it. I hope people can see the joy of reading this book as much as I did.