Identity is messy. It’s rarely a straight line, and honestly, most of us are just guessing as we go. But for James McBride, the guessing game was a matter of survival and soul-searching. When he wrote The Color of Water, he wasn't just trying to land a spot on a bestseller list. He was trying to figure out who his mother was. It turns out, she was a white, Jewish woman named Ruchel Dwora Zylska who reinvented herself as Ruth McBride Jordan, a Black woman in Harlem and Brooklyn.
It sounds like a movie plot. It isn’t.
McBride’s memoir, subtitled "A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother," flipped the script on how we talk about race in America. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. Two years! That doesn't happen by accident. It happened because the book refuses to be simple. It’s a dual narrative. You get James, the son, struggling with his mixed-race identity in the 1960s and 70s, and you get Ruth, the mother, whose voice McBride captured through exhaustive interviews.
She was a rabbi’s daughter from Poland. She married a Black man in 1941. Think about that for a second. In 1941, that wasn't just unconventional; it was dangerous. But Ruth didn't care about the "danger" in the way we might expect. She cared about God, education, and her twelve children. She was a powerhouse who rode a bicycle through her Black neighborhood because she never learned to drive. She was an anomaly.
The Secret History of Ruth McBride Jordan
The heart of The Color of Water is Ruth’s silence. For decades, her children didn't know she was Jewish. They didn't know she was an immigrant. When James would ask her what color God was, she’d tell him God is "the color of water." It’s a beautiful, deflective answer. It’s the kind of thing a mother says when she’s trying to protect her kids from a world that wants to put everyone in a box.
Ruth’s early life was harrowing. Her father, Fishel Shilsky—whom she called "Tateh"—was a violent, racist man who sexually abused her. He was a dynamic of contradictions: an Orthodox rabbi who ran a grocery store in Suffolk, Virginia, and treated his Black customers with absolute disdain. Ruth fled that life. She didn't just leave; she died to her family. When she married Andrew "Dennis" McBride, her Jewish family performed shiva for her. They considered her dead.
That’s a heavy burden to carry while raising twelve kids in a housing project.
She pivoted. She embraced the Black church. She found a community that accepted her more than her own flesh and blood ever did. But she never quite fit in anywhere, did she? James describes her as "light-skinned" in his eyes until he grew old enough to realize she was actually white. This realization caused a massive internal rift for him. He felt like a "shuffled deck of cards."
Why the dual narrative works so well
Most memoirs follow a single path. McBride gives us two. We see Ruth’s past in the first person—written in her voice, which James reconstructed—and James’s present in his own.
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This structure isn't just a stylistic choice. It's a bridge. By alternating chapters, McBride shows how the traumas of the mother bleed into the anxieties of the son. Ruth’s insistence on education was a defense mechanism. She knew that for her Black children, a degree was a shield. She sent them to the best schools she could find, often navigating the city’s complex bureaucracy to get them into predominantly white or Jewish schools where the resources were better.
She was fierce.
I think about the scene where she takes James to register for school. She’s the only white person there, and she’s demanding excellence. She didn't see herself as a white woman in a Black space; she saw herself as a mother. Period. But James saw the stares. He felt the tension. He was terrified that someone would hurt her, or that her whiteness somehow made him "less" Black in the eyes of his peers.
Breaking Down the "Color of Water" Philosophy
The title is the soul of the book.
"God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color."
It’s a neat way to bypass the racial tensions of the 60s, but it also speaks to a deeper spiritual truth that Ruth clung to. She was a woman of immense faith. When her first husband died, she was devastated. When her second husband, Hunter Jordan, died, she nearly broke. But she kept going. She used the church as a bedrock.
Interestingly, McBride doesn't paint a rosy picture of his own youth. He was a runaway. He used drugs. He failed. He drifted. The book is incredibly honest about the "chaos" of having twelve siblings in a small house. It wasn't a curated, Instagram-ready life. It was loud, messy, and often broke.
Yet, all twelve children went to college. Every single one.
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That is the "Ruth factor." She was a drill sergeant for success because she knew the alternative was oblivion. She understood that identity isn't just about what you look like; it’s about what you do and who you serve.
Common Misconceptions about the Book
- It’s just a book about race. Not really. It’s a book about religion, memory, and the complicated way we love our parents even when they’re difficult.
- Ruth was "passing." No, Ruth wasn't trying to pretend she was Black. She just lived her life in a Black community and stopped identifying with the people who had rejected her. There’s a huge difference.
- It’s a tragic story. Parts of it are, sure. But mostly? It’s a triumph. It’s about the sheer willpower required to reinvent a life from scratch.
The Suffolk, Virginia Connection
If you want to understand the grit of this story, you have to look at Suffolk. When McBride finally travels there as an adult to find his mother's roots, he finds a town that is still haunted by its past. He meets people who remembered his grandfather, the "Old Man Shilsky."
He finds the site of the old grocery store.
This part of the book feels like a detective novel. James is hunting for ghosts. He finds that his mother’s family had virtually erased her. It’s a chilling reminder of how quickly a person can be "deleted" from a family tree when they break the unwritten rules of their tribe. But James also finds a sort of peace there. He realizes that his mother wasn't "crazy" or "weird"—she was a survivor of a very specific kind of Southern, immigrant, and religious trauma.
Nuance in the Narrative
One thing people often overlook is the role of Hunter Jordan, James's stepfather. While the book is a tribute to his mother, Hunter is the "daddy" who provided the stability. He lived in a separate house for much of the time because the Brooklyn house was too crowded. He was a man of few words but immense impact.
When Hunter dies, the family's world tilts. Ruth’s grief is visceral. James’s spiral into rebellion is a direct result of losing that anchor. It highlights a recurring theme: family isn't just about blood. It's about who shows up.
What James McBride Taught Us About Memoir Writing
Before The Color of Water, many memoirs were either celebrity puff pieces or strictly chronological accounts of a single life. McBride changed the game by centering his mother. He realized his own story didn't make sense without hers.
He spent years trying to get her to talk. Ruth was notoriously private. She didn't want to look back. She’d say things like, "Why do you want to know that for?" or "That's in the past." It took a specific kind of persistence—the kind only a son has—to break through that crust.
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He used a tape recorder. He took notes. He verified what he could.
The result is a book that feels authentic because it acknowledges the gaps in memory. Sometimes Ruth remembers things one way, and the historical record says another. McBride lets those tensions exist. He doesn't try to "fix" her story; he just tells it.
Why It’s Still Relevant in 2026
We are still obsessed with identity. We are still arguing about who belongs where. The Color of Water offers a middle path. It suggests that while race is a powerful social force, it isn't the totality of a human being.
Ruth’s life was a middle finger to Jim Crow and a rejection of the narrow-mindedness of her upbringing. She chose a different way. She chose a path of radical integration, long before that was a buzzword.
Actionable Insights for Readers and Writers
If you’re coming to this book for the first time, or if you’re a writer looking to capture your own family history, there are a few things you can actually do to engage with these themes:
- Interview your elders now. Ruth didn't want to talk, but James kept asking. Use a voice memo app. Don't worry about a narrative yet; just get the stories. Ask about the "small" things—the smell of a kitchen, the price of milk, the sound of a street.
- Look for the "Color of Water" in your own life. What are the things you take for granted that actually have deep, complex roots? Everyone has a "Ruth" in their family tree—someone who broke the rules or changed their name or moved across the world. Find that person.
- Read for the voice. Notice how McBride gives Ruth a distinct cadence. She sounds different than he does. If you’re writing, try to capture the "music" of how people talk, not just the facts of what they say.
- Acknowledge the trauma without being defined by it. The book is heavy, but it’s not depressing. That’s a hard balance to strike. You can acknowledge that bad things happened (like Fishel’s abuse) without letting that be the end of the story.
James McBride went on to become a National Book Award winner for The Good Lord Bird and a celebrated musician. But The Color of Water remains his most personal work. It’s a testament to the idea that we are all, in some way, a product of a history we don't fully understand.
By the time you finish the final page, you don't just know about Ruth McBride Jordan. You feel like you've sat at her kitchen table. You've heard the chaos of the twelve kids. You've felt the breeze as she pedals that old blue bicycle down the street, a white woman in a Black world, perfectly at home and entirely out of place all at once.
To really get the most out of this memoir, look into the Suffolk, Virginia historical records or visit the Jewish Museum in New York. Seeing the physical locations mentioned in the book—Suffolk’s old downtown or the streets of Red Hook—adds a layer of reality that makes the prose even more striking. If you’re a student of history, compare Ruth’s experience in the 1940s with the legal realities of the time, such as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. It puts her "rebellion" into a much sharper, more dangerous perspective.