“Please come home, Helen.” The door had a peephole in it. The object of McBride's constant embarrassment and continuous fear for her safety, his mother was an inspiring figure, who through sheer force. Just forget all of it and come on home.” From down the hallway, a doorway opened and a black woman watched in silence as the dark-haired, bowlegged white lady talked to the closed door. 'James McBride grew up as one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. “I know you’re there, Helen,” Mommy said. There was music playing on a stereo inside, and the voice of someone on the phone. She went to the apartment door and listened. Mommy stepped past them and walked through a haze of reefer smoke and took the elevator to the eighth floor. Nicholas Avenue, with junkies and winos standing out front. It was a dilapidated housing project near St. Mommy got the address and went to the place herself. She told Ma she didn’t know much about the lady other than that she wore a lot of scarves and used incense. But in his family’s everyday life in Red Hook, Brooklyn, race was like the power of the moon in my house, he writes. She replied that God is all colors and no colors at the same time the color of water. The chapters alternate between James McBride's descriptions of his early life and first-person accounts of his mother Ruth's life, mostly taking.

She’s living with some crazy woman,” Jack said. When James McBride was a boy, he asked his mother whether God was black or white. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, is the autobiography and memoir of James McBride first published in 1995 it is also a tribute to his mother, whom he calls Mommy, or Ma. Weeks passed, months, and Helen didn’t return. He was an old-timer who called school “schoolin”’ and called me “boy.” He had run off from Jim Crow in the South and felt that education, any education, was a privilege. They spoke a completely different language. “It’ll work out.” He had no idea what to do about Helen.

The color of water by james mcbride