I just finished writing a review of our Excelsior Water’s book club’s latest choice, James McBride, The Color of Water. There are so many things I promise I’ll write about, and put off, but today I screwed up my courage to share a book review that reveals probably more about myself than is wise.
It would be superfluous, even maybe pretentious, to write a long review for a book that’s been reviewed almost 11,000 times. But I would like to share my reaction -about stereotypes. I admit I was always pleased when I had Jewish students in my class. I believe without exception they appreciated learning and thinking, playing with ideas, often creatively enjoying the arts, dedicated to learning beyond a basis for establishing a paying career. I firmly believe it’s an integral part of Jewish heritage, even for a woman whose experience in her own Jewish family was bitterly negative. It certainly was evident in her skill at finding free cultural experiences for her large growing family and affordable ways to see them (and herself) through excellent schools, even graduate schools and outstanding careers.
I also enjoyed the very personal demolition of stereotypes about poor black folks. Her experience with her black husbands, family, and friends was outstandingly welcoming and supportive – even loving — in spite of other people’s confusion about where she “belonged” on the color chart. A bit of mutual distrust and rejection of people of a different color, even as she apparently sometimes almost passed for black.
Beyond stereotypes, there’s no doubt that Ruth McBride Jordan was herself beyond stereotypes. What she accomplished through her home life was so much more than most. Being a bit OCD myself, I was almost jealous of her ease in dealing with the chaos of her large family, and the almost military assignment of leadership based on the birth position of her children.
Maybe most of all I admired the author’s description of his own young manhood and the career he eventually created for himself out of the chaos. I loved the accounting at the end of the universal successes, though different, of his siblings. It’s fun, as a psychologist, to play with the elements of each person’s self-construction.
Mostly, there’s no doubt the author’s mother was an exceptional human being, worthy of her son’s loving tribute.
monagustafsonaffinito 