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

by James McBride

They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

was ashamed of my mother, but see, love didn’t come natural to me until I became a Christian.

The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. It’s what made the river flow, the ocean swell, and the tide rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable.

Mommy kept us at a frantic living pace that left no time for the problem. We thrived on thought, books, music, and art, which she fed to us instead of food.

I could not imagine a police officer buying my story as I stood in front of the Jewish temple saying, “Uh, yeah, my grandfather was the rabbi here, you know …”

I found it odd and amazing when white people treated me that way, as if there were no barriers between us. It said a lot about this religion—Judaism—that some of its followers, old southern crackers who talked with southern twangs and wore straw hats, seemed to believe that its covenants went beyond the color of one’s skin.

He came from a home where kindness was a way of life. I wanted to be in this kind of family.

home. Imagine, if you will, five thousand years of Jewish history landing in your lap in the space of months. It sent me tumbling through my own abyss