Summary: The Color Of Water By James Mcbride

The events that form you are probably the best events of your entire life. In the memoir, The Color of Water by James McBride, the audience is told about a young mixed boy who grew up in a very segregated time period. The setting was Suffolk, Virginia; New York City; Louisville, Kentucky; Oberlin, Ohio; and Wilmington, Delaware. James McBride describes how he changed from a confused child into an intellectual individual. Although the story talks about many small events that all built up James McBride as a person, there were three major events that truly gave him definition as to whom he was, or who he could be. These events are when his step father, Hunter Jordan, died; when he moved to Delaware; and when he was able to finally uncover his

mother’s past. Those events were a domino effect in events that all led to the success of James McBride.
“I wanted to tell him that I loved him, that I hoped with all my heart that he would get better, but could not formulate the words in my mouth”(page 128).

Those were the words of James McBride when his step father, Hunter Jordan, died. This is the first event that led to a drastic change in James’ character. He was drawn to doing drugs and his grades plummeted, eventually dropping out of school completely. He also turned in to a thief, stealing from helpless old women to get money. His mother sent him to live with his sister, Jack, in hopes he would realize all that he had done wrong. While living there he got very close with Jack’s husband. Rich, and would hang out on “the corner.” He loved living how they lived; “They called me ‘New York,’ and let me sit out there all day, practicing my flute and smoking all the weed I wanted” (page 147). One of the men living on the corner began to talk to him about living his life the right way; “’If you want to drop out of school and shoot people and hang out on this corner all your life, go ahead. It’s your life!’ I had never heard Chicken Man talk so severely and what he said didn’t really hit me, not right away” (page 150). Although it took some time, after that he went back to school and tried to get back on

track.
The next major event was when he moves to Delaware and falls in love with music.

His family fought about whether or not they should move, but James knew that if they didn’t he would get into more trouble; “Plus I kept running into my old friends, who were getting into bigger and bigger trouble. I needed to see some new faces, a fresh start” (page 177). Along with staying out of trouble, New York grew too expensive and they would have had to move later on anyway. While living in Delaware James began to play music and ended up going to Europe with his jazz band. Music was considered his savior, distracting him from a bad crowd and eventually sent him to college. “By the time I began my senior year in high school, I knew I wanted to go to college and be a musician of some kind” (page 187). He was accepted into Oberlin College in Ohio, where he played music and was very

successful.
The final event that changed James was him finally discovering his mother’s past. “…the part of me that wanted to understand who I was began to irk and itch at me, like a pesky mosquito bite that cries out to be scratched” (page 205). He began to fail at work and lose his jobs and he believed it was because he did not understand who he was. He went to Suffolk, Virginia, which was where his mother grew up as a young girl, and tried to uncover the information she would not release to him. He failed trying to gather facts, because he didn’t have enough information to even ask around for what he was looking for. He tracked down his mother and finally got her to go back to Suffolk and talk with her old friend, Frances. Going back helped his mother realize how great her children truly are and also allowed James to connect with his Jewish roots.