Ruth mcbride jordan obituary

v“As lively as a novel, a well-written, thoughtful contribution to the literature on race.” —The Washington Post Book World

“It’s a story about keeping on and about not being a victim. It’s a love story…Much hilarity is mixed in with much sadness. As McBride describes the chaotic life in a family of fourteen, you can almost feel the teasing, the yelling, and the love.…The book is a delight, a goading, and an inspiration, worth your time and a few tears.”

—Sunday Denver Post

“A standout among the current surfeit of memoirs about growing up black in the United States…Mr. McBride’s portrait of his mother is not of a saint, which makes her all the more compelling.”

—The Washington Times

“Told with humor and clear-eyed grace…a terrific story…The sheer strength of spirit, pain, and humor of McBride and his mother as they wrestled with different aspects of race and identity is vividly told.…I laughed and thrilled to her brood of twelve kids…I wish I’d known them. I’m glad James McBride wrote it all down so I can.”

—The Nation

“A refreshing portrait of family self-discovery…brilliantly inter twine[s] passages of the family’s lives…Mr. McBride’s search is less about racial turmoil than about how he realizes how blessed he is to have had a support system in the face of what could have been insurmountable obstacles.”

—The Dallas Morning News

“James McBride has combined the techniques of the memoirist and the oral historian to illuminate a hidden corner of race relations. The author and his mother are two American originals.”

—Susan Brownmiller

“A lyrical, deeply moving tribute.…The Color of Water is about the love that a mother has for her children.”

—The Detroit News

“What makes this story inspiring is that she succeeded against strong odds…how she did this is what makes this memoir read like a very well-plotted novel. This moving and unforgettable memoir needs to be read by people of all colors and faiths.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The author, his mother, and his siblings come across as utterly unique, heroic, fascinating people. I couldn’t stop reading the book once I began. McBride is a wonderful writer.”

—Jonathan Kozol

“Eloquent…vivid, affecting…McBride’s mother should take much pleasure in this loving, if sometimes uncomfortable, memoir, which embodies family values of the best kind. Other readers will take pleasure in it as well.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Tells us a great deal about our nations racial sickness—and about the possibilities of triumphing over it.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Eye- and mind-opening about the eternal convolutions and paradoxes of race in America.” —Chicago Tribune (Tempo)

“Poignant…a uniquely American coming of age…Ruth McBride Jordan’s anecdotes are richly detailed, her voice clear and engaging. And she has a story worth telling.”

—The Miami Herald

“Fascinating…superbly written.” —The Boston Globe

“Remarkable…a page-turner, full of compassion, tremendous hardship and triumph…McBride’s story is ultimately a celebration delivered with humor and pride.”

—Emerge

“A wonderful story that goes beyond race…richly detailed…earthy, honest.” —The Baltimore Sun

“[A] remarkable saga.” —New York Newsday

Praise for James McBride’s

Miracle at St. Anna

“McBride creates an intricate mosaic of narratives that ultimately becomes about betrayal and the complex moral landscape of war.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Searingly, soaringly beautiful…The book’s central theme, its essence, is a celebration of the human capacity for love.”

—The Baltimore Sun

“McBride is adept at describing the wartime state of mind: land and people lying ravaged in the wake of a wild brutality.…His narrative, which is based on a true story, plunges straight to the heart.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“McBride makes an impressive foray into fiction with a multi-shaded WWII tale…a haunting meditation on faith that is also a crack military thriller…strikingly cinematic…With nods to Ralph Ellison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, McBride creates a mesmerizing concoction…a miracle in itself.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“So descriptive that I feel as though I’m an eyewitness to everything that happens emotionally on the frontline.”

—The Dallas Morning News

“James McBride…brings formidable storytelling skills and lyrical imagination to his novel…[He] deftly broadens the landscape of his drama by entering the minds of a range of supporting characters: Italian freedom fighters, white army officers, starving villagers, a clairvoyant, and even a sixteenth- century sculptor.”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Great-hearted, hopeful, and deeply imaginative.” —Elle

“McBride has taken a bold leap into fiction. [He] goes deep into each character and takes you with him. His rich description of the landscape…transports you into this world. It’s a great piece of storytelling. I cried. I laughed. I hated finishing this book.”

—Albuquerque Tribune

“Full of miracles of friendship, of salvation and survival.” —Los Angeles Times

“Riveting.” —Newsday

“A sweetly compelling novel. McBride combines elements of history, mythology, and magical realism to make this a story about the little things like life and forgiveness and shared experience.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Miracle at St. Anna powerfully examines the horrors of history and finds an unexpected wealth of goodness and compassion in the human soul.”

—Newark Star-Ledger

“The miracles of survival, of love born in extremity, and of inexplicable ‘luck’ are the subjects of this first novel. [Miracle at St. Anna] is true to the stark realities of racial politics yet has an eye to justice and hope.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“Roars ahead kicking and screaming to the finish, lightning-lit with rage and tenderness.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“A powerful and emotional novel of black American soldiers fighting the German army in the mountains of Italy. This is a refreshingly ambitious story of men facing the enemy in front and racial prejudice behind.…Through his sharply drawn characters, McBride exposes racism, guilt, courage, revenge and forgiveness, with the soldiers confronting their own fear and rage in surprisingly personal ways at the decisive moment in their lives.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A tale of hardship and horror as well as nobility and—yes—miracles, during the Italian campaign in World War II.”

—Philadelphia Daily News

“World War II provides a dazzling backdrop for James McBride’s first novel.” —Savoy

“A brutal and moving first novel…McBride’s heart is on his sleeve, but these days it looks just right.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Also by James McBride

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA

SONG YET SUNG

The Color of Water

A BLACK MAN’S TRIBUTE TO HIS WHITE MOTHER

James McBride

Riverhead Books, New York

RIVERHEAD BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 1996, 2006 by James McBride Readers Group Guide copyright © 2006 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Cover design copyright © 1996 by Honi Werner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Riverhead hardcover edition: January 1996 First Riverhead trade paperback edition: February 1997 First Riverhead trade paperback 10th Anniversary Edition: February 2006

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows;

McBride, James. The color of water: a Black man’s tribute to his white mother / James McBride.

p. cm. ISBN: 978-1-4406-3610-3 1. McBride-Jordan, Ruth, 1921– 2. McBride, James, date. 3. Mulattoes—New York (N.Y.)—Biography. 4. Mothers—New

York (N.Y.)—Biography. 5. Whites—New York (N.Y.)—Biography. 6. Mulattoes—New York (N.Y.)—Race Identity. I. Title.

F130.N4M38 1996 974.’100496073’0092—dc20 95-37243 CIP

[B]

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

I wrote this book for my mother,

and her mother, and mothers everywhere.

In memory of Hudis Shilsky, Rev. Andrew D. McBride, and Hunter L. Jordan, Sr.

Contents

1. Dead

2. The Bicycle

3. Kosher

4. Black Power

5. The Old Testament

6. The New Testament

7. Sam

8. Brothers and Sisters

9. Shul

10. School

11. Boys

12. Daddy

13. New York

14. Chicken Man

15. Graduation

16. Driving

17. Lost in Harlem

18. Lost in Delaware

19. The Promise

20. Old Man Shilsky

21. A Bird Who Flies

22. A Jew Discovered

23. Dennis

24. New Brown

25. Finding Ruthie

Epilogue

Afterword

Thanks and Acknowledgments

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from—where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she’d say, “God made me.” When I asked if she was white, she’d say, “I’m light-skinned,” and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers—yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story —the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942—and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past. Here is her life as she told it to me, and betwixt and between the pages of her life you will find mine as well.

The Color of Water

1.

Dead

I’m dead. You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years. Leave me alone. Don’t

bother me. They want no parts of me and me I don’t want no parts of them. Hurry up and get this interview over with. I want to watch Dallas. See, my family, if you had a been part of them, you wouldn’t have time for this foolishness, your roots, so to speak. You’d be better off watching the Three Stooges than to interview them, like to go interview my father, forget it. He’d have a heart attack if he saw you. He’s dead now anyway, or if not he’s 150 years old.

I was born an Orthodox Jew on April 1, 1921, April Fool’s Day, in Poland. I don’t remember the name of the town where I was born, but I do remember my Jewish name: Ruchel Dwajra Zylska. My parents got rid of that name when we came to America and changed it to Rachel Deborah Shilsky, and I got rid of that name when I was nineteen and never used it again after I left Virginia for good in 1941. Rachel Shilsky is dead as far as I’m concerned. She had to die in order for me, the rest of me, to live.

My family mourned me when I married your father. They said kaddish and sat shiva. That’s how Orthodox Jews mourn their dead. They say prayers, turn their mirrors down, sit on boxes for seven days, and cover their heads. It’s a real workout, which is maybe why I’m not a Jew now. There were too many rules to follow, too many forbiddens and “you can’ts” and “you mustn’ts,” but does anybody say they love you? Not in my family we didn’t. We didn’t talk that way. We said things like, “There’s a box in there for the nails,” or my father would say, “Be quiet while I sleep.”