The Color of Water

James McBride alternates memories of his childhood with the first-person story of his mother, Ruth McBride Jordan. Born Ruchel Dwajra Zylska to an Orthodox Jewish family, Ruth grows up under an abusive father in segregated Suffolk, Virginia, leaves her family and religion, and builds a life in New York through two marriages to Black men and the raising of twelve children.

McBride’s chapters follow his own struggle with poverty, grief, racial identity and the secrets surrounding his mother’s past. Ruth’s insistence on education, faith and movement holds the household together while the Civil Rights and Black Power eras change the language through which her children understand themselves. The memoir is both a family history and a study of Black–Jewish identity across twentieth-century America.