James Mcbride's The Color Of Water

The book “The Color of Water” is about the author, James McBride, and his mother, Rachel. It talks about their experiences growing up, their thoughts, feelings, observations, and what is important to them. The book makes it clear time and again that to Rachel, the most important things are family, faith, and education. The first thing that Rachel values is family. She grew up in a very strict family that valued rules above all else. She never felt loved by her family, nobody ever said “I love you,” and her father would always say cruel things to her mother. They were an arranged marriage. Many of the things that happened in her childhood led to problems in adulthood, such as when her grandfather died. Nobody talked about it or explained what happened, so she …show more content…
In adulthood, she did everything she could to do better for her chosen family. She married for love, to Andrew McBride, for which she was disowned. They had eight children together, and when he died, she remarried to Hunter Jordan and they had four more. Hunter treated all of the children with love and kindness. He never made any of them feel like he cared for them less because they weren’t his biological. Rachel only wanted the best for her children. She wanted them to have everything she didn’t. She worked hard to make sure they were fed, educated, and cared for, despite how many kids there were, because family is so important to her. The second thing Rachel values is faith. She was raised as an Orthodox Jew. She always disliked all the rules that came with the religion. She said “There were too many rules to follow, too many forbiddens and ‘you can'ts’ and you mustn’ts.’” (pg. 2) She felt trapped by all the restrictions on her family. There were some parts of Judaism that she liked, however, such as Passover. She enjoyed cleaning up the house, and bringing out the special Passover dishes, and the

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