The Color of Water by James McBride is a book about the author finding his own identity through discovering who is mother, Ruth really is. Throughout his whole life he has felt that there is something different between his mother and himself. His father and his eleven brothers and sisters are all black and his mother was white. This never really bothered James when he was a child. His mother never talked about race and did not see herself as different from her children.
I came from a small town where everyone was white. I have not had a great deal of experience with people of different races.
It was a shame the way that Ruth's father treated her mother. "I am a citizen and you"re not. I can send you back to Europe anytime I want."(McBride,10/13/03:16). Her father was a mean old man. He never loved his wife. They got married in an arranged marriage. Love had nothing to do with it. "Mameh was his meal ticket to America, and once he got here, he was done with her."(McBride,10/13/03:15). I can't imagine that a man would treat his wife like that. I am married and if my husband treated me like that I would leave him, but times are different now. The father was having an affair when his wife got sick and was ready to die. He did not even stay by his wife's side when she was dying.
Not only was the father mean to the mother but also to Ruth. He would do things to her when she was younger that she never told anyone. He would get into bed with her and molest her. She had no love for her father and was afraid of him. When she got older, she dated a black man named Peter. She had to hide the relationship from her father because he hated black people. Then she got pregnant and had to go with her aunt and have an abortion, so her father would not find out. That is a very sad situation. She aborted a child because her father did not approve of a black man being with his white daughter. The father ends up with nothing.