"Her oddness, her complete nonawareness of what the world thought of her, a nonchalance in the face of what I perceived to be imminent danger from blacks and whites who disliked her for being a white person in a black world. She saw none of it."

James McBride's The Color of Water:

A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

Chapters 1-9

Although I really enjoyed reading On Writing, it's definitely nice to begin a new book! So far, this tribute has been easy to follow, historically eye-opening, and captivating to uncover. To be honest, I've never been interested in the Civil Rights Movement. I'm totally for it and how it's molded our great nation -- but it just never caught my eye like Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust did in my history classes. Even though I've only begun the book, it's changing my mind completely. Hearing McBride's words through his Jewish mother's experiences is incredibly interesting.

James McBride, born in 1957, tells the story of growing up with a white Jewish mother, 11 siblings and their two black fathers in Brooklyn’s Red Hook projects.

In this memoir, he shares a mix between his mother’s telling of her life – one that she had once refused to share with her children – blended into his own upbringing.

This first page hooked me in...authors, of course, know you have to get the reader's attention at this point. Nevertheless, on his first page, McBride writes,

 “As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from – where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she’d say, ‘God made me.’ When I asked if she was white, she’d say, ‘I’m light-skinned,’ and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school…yet none of us knew her maiden name until we were grown.”

And he continues in saying:

“Here is her life as she told it to me, and betwixt and between the pages of her life you will find mine as well.”

That's pretty powerful. His (and her) stories thus far may seem common and of little importance. But throughout the pages, I'm beginning to see the other side of racism, controversy, and strife. Maybe more of us should see ourselves as "the color of water" instead of getting caught up in the actual color of our skin that separate so many different peoples of the world we live in.