The Color of Water

Tension · This book describes the past life of James and Ruth, so in most cases, this book is done in past tense. When McBride talks about his current life, activities, beliefs, he currently uses tense.

Setup (Time) James McBride tells the story of Ruth 's life that began in the 1920' s. He focused on the 1930's, 40's and 50's. The memoir of James covers from the 1960's to the 1990's.

Setup (Location) · Suffolk, Virginia, New York City, Louisville, Kentucky, Oberio Olin, Wilmington, DE

Rising behavior - separation of Ruth and her parents. Ruth and Dennis marry. James faced a race relationship in society in the 1960s

Climax Ruth and her son James face a series of small climaxes of racial identity and difference

Theme · Past and present; self-motivation and self-reliance, secret burden excluded due to race and religion differences

Theme, Mother and child: intertwined voice, sense of alienation and unity, news tone and experience

The relationship between Ruth and her boyfriend Peter told her her blood relationship with blacks and her marriage with a black man. What James loved early about music and composition since he showed that he later adopted these two passions at the professional site.

James McBride's "Water Color" James McBride's memoir "Water Color" shows a man's quest for identity and self-awareness of his multi-ethnic family. Her white mother Ruth made her ask for acceptance in the African-American community that established her extended family from the two men she married as a childhood child abused the Jewish child. - She said that the hero Rachel was born without a father and a mother who does not mind her. "She is the nail of her coffin." Rachel's mother sometimes seriously attacked her. Rachel was brought up mainly by her grandparents and her aunt and uncle while her mother was working at a factory called Congo. Rachel's mother agreed to marry Alfred Kalouvac. Because she had her daughter and gave Rachel his surname, he told that Rachel had a father.

In "the color of water" McBride remembered his mother's footprints and reproduced her extraordinary story through her burning vibrant voice. On April 1, 1921 she was born in Poland as the daughter of Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska). She ran away from the massacre, moved to the United States, and soon settled in a small town in Suffolk, Virginia. Jewishism and ethnic tension are rising. Ruth explained about parents' unloved marriage, frankness and immediacy, disabled mothers with the weak, her cruel and sexually abused father, and the family she left and the rest of her life.