About a dozen years ago a member of my congregation handed me a book and said, “Here, read this. It’s a great book.” Some of you know me well enough to realize that when someone insists that I read a book, I try to politely decline the opportunity. I think, “I'll choose my own books, thank you very much!” For some reason (I guess I was new to the church and didn’t want to offend the lady), I borrowed the book and read it. The Color of Water by James McBride was an inspiring and memorable story, so I’m thankful that Miriam Nassar (now deceased) urged me to read it.
A couple of weeks ago, something reminded me of McBride’s work, so I decided to read it again. You know that, depending on one’s circumstances, books can be meaningful at one time and uninteresting a few years later. But this story and the writing style were as pleasurable this time as they had been more than a decade ago. I also had the advantage, this time around, of listening to two talented performers (Andre Braugher and Lainie Kazan) read the book.
The Color of Water is the story of James McBride and his mother, Ruth McBride Jordan. The most obvious unusual nature of the story is that Ruth, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Poland, married an African American from the South. So James is a product of two radically different cultures. Inevitably Ruth’s choice to live and raise her family in the African American milieu was confusing to James. So the memoir was inspired by McBride’s need to know his mother’s story. And the book became, as the subtitle reveals, “A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother.”
A second intriguing aspect of the memoir is that the chapters flip back and forth between McBride’s voice and his mother’s. Ruth’s viewpoint takes place primarily in the 1920s, 30s and 40s while her son’s perspective conveys life in 1950s, 60s, 70’s, and beyond.
There is much one can gain from reading The Color of Water. First it’s a book about family love, or affection (storge) as C. S. Lewis calls it in The Four Loves. McBride wrote in his Afterword to the Tenth Anniversary Edition, “For me, this book has always been, and will forever be, a book about a mother and her children, and how that mother raised her children with love and respect and God. About a mother’s love, a father’s love, a family love. In all the important ways, my family’s story is not unique. It plays out across the world, on every continent, in every nation, city, town, and village every day. Family love: It is firm footing, something to cling to in a frightened world that seems to spin out of control with war, turmoil, terrorism, and uncertainty. It is our highest calling and our greatest nobility.” (295)
The Color of Water is also realistic about the rejection our world dishes out. Ruth’s first words in the book are, “I’m dead.” Her Jewish family had rejected her because she married an African American. “They said kaddish and sat shiva. That’s how Orthodox Jews mourn their dead. They say prayers, turn their mirrors down, sit on boxes for seven days, and cover their heads. It’s a real workout, which is maybe why I’m not a Jew now.” (2) As a child James could see the obvious: he was black and his mother was white; but he couldn’t figure how that worked, and his mother wouldn’t explain it to him. By the time he was ten he surely noticed the stares and remarks, the glances and cackles prompted by the unusual sight of a white mother with her black children. (100)
James’ mother wanted him to receive a good education, so she sent him to a predominantly Jewish public school. Predictably James was the only black student in his fifth-grade class. Once, when his teacher read aloud from their history book’s one page summary of “Negro history,” someone in the back of the class whispered a racial slur aimed at James, prompting a ripple of tittering and giggling across the room. He reports, “I felt the blood rush to my face and sank low in my chair, seething inside, yet did nothing.” (90) Rejection hit its mark.
The Color of Water gives us the opportunity to consider multiculturalism. James clearly had no choice about his family for he was born into an interracial environment. In contrast, churches can choose to welcome people from diverse cultures. I’ll state the obvious: churches that choose to be inclusive will experience change. Prejudicial attitudes that have plagued humanity will surface, so McBride’s memoir can help us think through the issues ahead of time.
Clearly the Lord God wants the nations to worship together in peace. Solomon prayed to the Lord in anticipation of people from other lands worshiping with the people of Israel (1 Kings 8:41-43). Ruth, a Moabite woman, worshiped with Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18). Psalm 67 prays, “May all the peoples praise you!” The book of Acts graphically shows the Lord God directing early believers to welcome people from other nations (Acts chapters 10-11). Paul wrote, “For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us” (Ephesians 2:14 NLT). The book of Revelation celebrates the reality of people from every tribe and language and people and nation worshiping God together in heaven.
McBride’s memoir also affirms life after death. The book begins with the death of Rachel Deborah Shilsky and chronicles her rebirth as Ruth McBride Jordan. The funniest illustration of this is McBride’s description of going out for a drive with his mother who hadn’t driven in decades. She acted like a sixteen-year-old behind the wheel for the first time. When they finally came to a stop she proclaimed, “That’s it, I quit.” McBride comments that the irony was that his mother knew how to drive before she was eighteen. “But she had left her past so far behind that she literally did not know how to drive.” (168)
And James clearly affirms that Ruth’s new life came through Jesus Christ. “Jesus gave Mommy hope. Jesus was Mommy’s salvation. Jesus pressed her forward.” It’s also true that, while McBride did not write the memoir to convert unbelievers, the work is a witness to the power of the Lord Jesus Christ in his mother and in McBride himself.
While I was writing this review I had the good fortune of hearing James McBride as a guest on a public radio talk-show. The prime focus of the program was multiculturalism, but one of the listeners phoned in just to say that The Color of Water provided a pleasurable reading experience. So there’s a lot to glean from this beautiful work. The more I read it the more I feel like putting it in someone’s hand and saying, “Here, read this. It’s a great book.”
Copyright © 2009 Stan Bohall, all rights reserved
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