As I walked along the wharf and looked over the Nansemond River, which was colored an odd purple by the light of the moon, I said to myself, What am I doing here? Ironically, its a condition that affects mostly white people. That's all., But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. That started to worry me a little but I didnt worry much. Quotes By James McBride. Instant PDF downloads. Later, their local preacher Rev. He made no separation between the McBride and the Jordan children, and my siblings and I never thought of or referred to each other as half brothers and half sisters, Mommy, after all, did not really look like me. And God. to start your free trial of SparkNotes Plus. Helen was far beyond that. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. The flaw in the world is that blacks have often been represented as bad or dangerous. I was always grateful to Aunt Betts for that. . You were different from everyone and liked by very few. Ruths Christian principles keep her moving forwards, even in the face of tragedy. My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. Novelguide.com is the premier free source for literary analysis on the web. James McBride asks her mother why she cries in Church, and her response is that God makes her happy. One morning a couple of years later when I was at Oberlin College, I went to my mailbox and found a letter from her telling me that her husband had died suddenly of cancer. I had an ache inside, a longing, but I didnt know where it came from or why I had it. 25 Thoughtful Quotes from the Book The Color of Water. She could back the trailer up with the goods in it, unload it at the store, back the car into the yard, unhook the trailer, and park the car in the garage, backing in. Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Ruth McBride-Jordan Character Analysis in The Color of Water - LitCharts She had an iron purpose to protect and raise her children, to be strong and overcome whatever happened. The New Brown Memorial Church then also allows James and his siblings to connect to each other, to God, to their mother, and to their deceased father. (including. And I wanted to tell folks that, I wanted to shout out, Hey yall, it really doesnt matter! I actually believed folks would accept that, that theyd see what a good person he was and maybe accept us, and I went through a few days of thinking this, after which I told him one night, Lets run off to the country and get married, and he said, No way. Wed love to have you back! I dont belong to any of those groups. And I wanted to tell folks that, I wanted to shout out, Hey yall, it really doesnt matter! I actually believed folks would accept that, that theyd see what a good person he was and maybe accept us, and I went through a few days of thinking this, after which I told him one night, Lets run off to the country and get married, and he said, No way. These encounters enrage Ruth, and convince her children that with the exception of their mother, white people are at best unreliable and at worst actively dangerous. All Quotes An Incredible Outcome In the book The Color of Water by James McBride son shares the troubles he had to go through while he was growing up as he also, shares his shares his mother's obstacles and triumphs. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. 50 The Color of Water Quotes With Page Numbers If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. I knew that! "Sometimes without conscious realization, our thoughts, our faith, out interests are entered into the past. Creating notes and highlights requires a free LitCharts account. The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. Welcome back. Her name then was Rachel Deborah Shilsky, and her father was a traveling rabbi who abused his family and forced them to . 1. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. A group of white men try to kill her and Dennis with bottles when theyre out on the street one night, and a black woman punches Ruth in the face because she disapproves of Ruth and Denniss relationship. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story---the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942---and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past. Another brother, David, who is a doctoral student at Colombia at the time, is arrested in Delaware for an illegal U-turn. ., But as a kid, I preferred the black side, and often wished that Mommy had sent me to black schools like my friends. They lived above the store, which was located in the mostly black section of town. May 1, 2023, SNPLUSROCKS20 She disliked people with money yet was in constant need of it. Are you crazy? I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt. My view of the world is not merely that of a black man but that of a black man with something of a Jewish soul. Race and Racism Theme in The Color of Water | LitCharts But their visible blackness also makes them targets at school, where their white teachers round down their scores, and in the streets, where they are arrested at astounding rates. The Color of Water: Character List | SparkNotes SparkNotes PLUS It hurt me a little bit to stand there and lie. She went to the apartment door and listened. I gotta get out of here. It suddenly occurred to me that my grandmother had walked around here and gazed upon this water many times, and the loneliness and agony that Hudis Shilsky felt as a Jew in this lonely southern townfar from her mother and sisters in New York, unable to speak English, a disabled Polish immigrant whose husband had no love for her and whose dreams of seeing her children grow up in America vanished as her life drained out of her at the age of forty-sixsuddenly rose up in my blood and washed over me in waves. She disliked people with money yet was in constant need of it. Refine any search. Ruth's adult life differed greatly from her life with her family in Suffolk. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). Hes not white. 'That's all I have,' she said. Thanks for checking out our website. Ruth loved him passionately: " [M]y whole life changed after I fell in love. Unlike my siblings, he had no opinions. Hes a spirit.Whats a spirit? A spirits a spirit. What color is Gods spirit?It doesnt have a color, she said. To further escape from painful reality, I created an imaginary world for myself. I knew that! By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy. character, A nigger and you? My best friend Billy Smiths mother was as light as Mommy was and had red hair to boot, but there was no question in my mind that Billys mother was black and my mother was not. Get books for your students and raise funds for your classroom. This sentiment echoes one of the main themes of the book: to understand the present, one must be familiar with the past. Neither did I look like the role models in my lifemy stepfather, my godparents, other relativesall of whom were black. The way the content is organized, LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in, Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme, The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Religion appears in each chapter of. Religion Theme in The Color of Water | LitCharts Rachel Deborah Shilsky could drive a car and pull a trailer behind it, but Ruth McBride Jordan had never touched a steering wheel before that day in 1973, and you can make book on it. While other people continue to suffer, Ruth finds solace in God. As I walked home, holding Mommys hand while she fumed, I thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. Mommy was by her own definition, light-skinned, a statement which I had initially accepted as fact but at some point later decided was not true.. Detailed quotes explanations with page numbers for every important quote on the site. The Sheffers, Helen Weintraub, the Jaffes, they talked to me in person and by letter in a manner and tone that, in essence, said Dont forget us. Ruth McBride" James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother 6 likes Like "The man was the finest preacher. Earn weekly rewards. Her father explicitly tells her that if she marries a black man theres no point in ever coming home again. 20% Racism In The Color Of Water By James Mcbride - Bartleby 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. Next to that, all the rules and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. Hed shrug and smile. Nowadays these mixed couples get on TV every other day complaining, Oh, its hard for us. They have cars and television and homes and theyre complaining. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds. Then after a while, my period was late. It isnt an absolute good in any characters life, but instead a way for them to navigate the world. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time we would be happy. Dont come back., Like most of the Jews in Suffolk they treated me very kindly, truly warm and welcoming, as if I were one of them, which in an odd way I suppose I was. They got no problems, and I said, Yeah, man, I hear you, while inside my pocket was the folded letter holding the heartbroken words of an old white lady who had always gone out of her way to help meand many others like me. I told him I didnt want to see him anymore and walked back through the black neighborhood, into the store, and went upstairs and cried my heart out, because I still loved him. You werent accepted to be with a black man and that was that. There was something inside me, an ache I had, like a constant itch that got bigger and bigger as I grew, that told me. There but for the grace of God goes my own motherand by extension, myself. For Ruth and James (in his adulthood), their Christian faith is a guiding light in their lives. For the first time in his life, James feels an affinity with nonrelatives who are technically white, and he appreciates how the Southern Jews of Suffolk seemed to believe that its covenants went beyond the color of ones skin.. We talk about other times, other places, other persons, and lose our living hold on the present. A deep sigh. My parents got rid of that name when we came to America and changed it to Rachel Deborah Shilsky, and I got rid of that name when I was nineteen and never used it again after I left Virginia for good in 1941. The Color of Water Chapters 4-6 Summary & Analysis - SparkNotes He looked just like me. James' house is messy, a "combination three-ring circus and zoo," with pets rotating in and out. As an adult, McBride offers the reader his story by alternating between his mother's voice and his own. James explains how her mother bore her tragic past, the loss of her family, and the constant insults to herself and her children because of the racial issue. 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., Being mixed is like that tingling feeling you have in your nose just before you sneezeyoure waiting for it to happen but it never does. It is hard to find a good minister with "vision" these days, according to Ruth. Make faces at him and order him around. One afternoon on the way home from church I asked her whether God was black or white. Well, I didnt feel number one with nobody but him, and I didnt give a hoot that he was black. In a world where everyones playing, love trumps us all. The fact that he was black and the girl he was marrying was blackwell, that hurt me even more. On Jan. 9, her son said, she died at her home in Ewing, N.J., at the age of 88. Make faces at him and order him around. As a Jew, Ruth found herself excluded from the white world of the South, and felt she could partially identify with the hardships of her black neighbors. Dont come back., Like most of the Jews in Suffolk they treated me very kindly, truly warm and welcoming, as if I were one of them, which in an odd way I suppose I was. Even though she slammed the door in my face years later, I never felt bitter toward her. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Ruth resisted her father's prejudices and sympathized with the black people in her town. Contact us Ironically, its a condition that affects mostly white people. When Malcolm X talked about the white devil Mommy simply felt those references didnt apply to her., but all your 'sorrys' are gone when a person dies That's why you have to say all your 'sorrys' and 'I love yous' while a person is living, because tomorrow isn't promised., The plain truth is that youd have an easier time standing in the middle of the Mississippi River and requesting that it flow backward than to expect people of different races and backgrounds to stop loving each other, stop marrying each other, stop starting families, stop enjoying the dreams that love inspires. She was gone. Theyd walk away from me if they saw me walking down the road coming toward them, and if they came into the store, they wouldnt even look at me. And a little money. In running from her past, Mommy has created her own nation, a rainbow coalition that descends on her house every Christmas and Thanksgiving and sleeps everywhereon the floor, on rugs, in shifts; sleeping double, triple to a bed, two up, three down, just like old times. Hes not white. Ruth McBride Jordan Quotes 17 of the best book quotes from Ruth McBride Jordan 01 Share "I do remember my Jewish name: Ruchel Dwarja Zylska. I kept in touch with her for many years. on 2-49 accounts, Save 30% James, confused about race in general and specifically where he falls on the spectrum, asks his mother if God is black or white, and Does he like black or white people better? His mother explains that God is colorless, and loves people of all colors equally. She was always sending me off on a bus someplace, to elementary school, to camp, to relatives in Kentucky, to college. Yet conflict was a part of our lives, written into our very faces, hands, and arms, and to see how contradiction lived and survived in its essence, we had to look no farther than our own mother. Born in Poland in 1921, Ruth Jordan was a Jewish immigrant to the United States. Sometimes you just need to believe in yourself. Thats all. But I got eight kids and they go to the movies too. Rachel, or Ruth as she calls herself, fled her Jewish family when she was eighteen to marry a black man, Andrew McBride. He would listen to me. Validate reading with our Dynamic Quiz System. No way. My own humanity was awakened, rising up to greet me with a handshake as I watched the first glimmers of sunlight peek over the horizon. I was loved, I was loved, and I didnt care what anyone thought. The unwavering strength of Ruth McBride Jordan. She sighs and then states that the times are different. Theyd say forget it. They will surely hang me.. Hes a spirit.Whats a spirit? A spirits a spirit. What color is Gods spirit?It doesnt have a color, she said. Via James's quest for his mother's heritage as a struggling biracial kid, McBride portrays the strength of Ruth who endures social and economic hardships raising . He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus." James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother 5 likes Like