The Color of Water : A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (Cassette)

Rating:
Summary: Superficial and lacking in depth
Review: James McBride's mother is truely a remarkable and awe inspiring woman. Raising 12 children, mostly by herself, with little to no money, and getting them all into college is beyond amazing. However, I found his book to be an atrocious read. His mother's story is more linear with random stories of McBride's childhood thrown in between chapters. The book jumps around with McBride's story from different points in his childhood that don't seem to have any point or merit.

My bookclub choose this book because the subject matter was appealing. However, collectively we were very disappointed. McBride's attempts to show his true emotions fell short as they came across very superficial and in some cases, cliche. McBride is truly a lost sole and this book reflects that.

His mother's story was very appealing and I was very disappointed that the book didn't focus on her more closely. McBride's story of his childhood growing up in a time of racial unrest with a white mother has a lot of appear, but he fails to really show the reader what that life must have been like. In many instances it seemed that just as he started to scratch the surface of his emotions, the chapter would end and he would move on to another random and disconnected memory.

A very disappointing read.

Rating:
Summary: This is an author who doesn't want to know....
Review: Reading this book made me angry, and reading all the 5-star reviews only made it worse. The book makes clear that the author's mother abandoned her entire Jewish family, married an African-American after apparently having no social life whatsoever except having previously become pregnant by what seems to have been a con man, never contacted her Jewish family again after she abandoned them except to ask them for money, and never thereafter went to see her mother even when the mother was dying in a hospital a quick train ride away. She converted to Christianity and then spent a lifetime concealing information about her past from her children. When one son, a sometime-reporter, decided that her story would make a good book, he took down uncritically a frankly completely unbelievable story about a miserly, money-hungry, child-abusing, wife-abusing, violent rabbi father, someone who seems to have stepped off the pages of an anti-Semitic tract. The Jewish family life described in this book comes right out of the pages of the Jew of Malta, complete with bloodthirsty and barbaric rituals, mindless rules, usury, and utter hatred of others. In writing this up, the son makes no effort to contact his living aunt or many living cousins who might have cast any doubt on his mother's story. Given that even to the casual reader it is apparent that the mother's tale is a carefully constructed rationalization and justification of her own decision to cut all family ties, the son's uncritical acceptance of this fable is shocking. I would take this as a work of fiction until proven otherwise.

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I had 2 read this frashman year in HS and was mad because we had 2 read over summer break, but i sure was happy we had to read this. every page gets better and better.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, Moving, and Inspiring Memoir
Review: This memoir has identified James McBride as an inspiring author who honors, respect, and identifies that his mother is white. This memoir is about James McBride going behind his mom's history and finding out why his mom is white and why he is black. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother is an astounding book and I absolutely love reading the book. I have read it in two days and I have never read a book the way I read The Color or Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. I have read it twice already and I will continue reading it over and over because this book is truly wonderful. Many moments in the book are heartbreaking, moving, and shocking. Other than this being a great book, I find it to be a great experience in reading it.

This book is truly a wonderful, moving, and inspiring memoir.


Rating:
Summary: Religion and Education
Review: I am not that enamoured of the heroine of this book, Ruth McBride Jordan, nee Shilsky. I wonder if there may have been something in her Jewish heritage that instilled the love of education in her and which she passed on to her 12 children. Did she have to become a Baptist to do this ?

Rating:
Summary: I CRIED
Review: I read this book in two days while on a cruise ship. Instead of partying it up on the ship, I was in my room reading!! I could not put it down. It was a very sweet, intimate book... more like a lover letter... from a son to his mother. I rarely cry from books, but this one had the tears flowing!! A strong statement, but I would have to say it is probably my favorite book. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Rite of Passage
Review: Gripping, this is a book filled with passion and emotion that forces the reader to re-examine the world in which they live. With an unusual format and loads of street slang, the reader has to take several pauses to reread or rethink the material.

When I began reading this book, I found myself somewhat confused as to what was going on. I did not initially understand that the chapters swapped back and forth from McBride speaking, to his mother speaking, and I wondered if this had occurred with other readers. So, on the campus of my university, I sought out other students who had also read The Color of Water. Seven out of ten of the students that I found, had also had difficulty understanding the format in the first few chapters. I saw that I was not alone.

Once I figured out that I was simultaneously reading about two different peoples lives, my interest in the book escalated. I think that James McBride avoided writing strictly based on his own experiences because the reader would not have a complete understanding of why his life was the way it was. Almost every major life experience that McBride endured tied in directly with the concurrent events of the life of his mother.

Not only filled with a variety of events in the characters lives, this novel really allows the reader to find a relation to the characters. McBride and his mother both undergo life challenges that, while many relate to race, can correlate with readers of any ethnic background. No matter what ethnicity the reader hails from, they can sympathize with the major themes in this novel. Life and death, love and acceptance, and rebellion, are all issues that the "average" reader faces, regardless of their race. And for the "standard white" reader, it really helps to give an understanding of a part of society and the world that they may not entirely comprehend.

This memoir posing as a novel is a piece of literary brilliance. Whether the reader is a parent raising children or a teenager struggling to find acceptance, they will be able to relate to this book. It touches the hearts of all whose eyes fall upon it's words and reminds the reader that there are things in life so much bigger than the color of skin.