Examples Of I Hate My Mom In The Color Of Water

I hate my mom. My mom gets on my nerves. I respect my mom’s actions. I understand her actions. I agree with my mom’s actions. I love my mom. James perspective of his mother in the Color of Water is drastically different throughout the book. He sees his mom as an embarrassment to him, he respects his mom, and finally, he loves his mom. Things can change rapidly and things can change over a lifetime; James perspective took a lifetime to change. It all had to start somewhere and James perspective started at the bottom.
Has your mom ever done something that just made you want to run and hide? I know my mom has and so did James mom. Ruth was a white woman who married a black man, had black children, and lived in a black neighborhood. “When I was

5). Ruth would openly ride her bike through the neighborhood displaying her color for all to see. This really embarrassed James. The fact that he had a white mother was an embarrassment to him enough, then she broadcasts it to every black person in a 2-mile radius. Also, Ruth was very proud and feisty. In fact, living in the neighborhood, she lived in should have made her tamer and want to fly under the radar, at least that’s what James thought. As a result of her personality is the way it was it made James even more embarrassed. He didn’t understand why she acted the way she did. How she could have so much confidence. Why she would even want to be seen. James just didn’t understand. He couldn’t stand when she would argue with someone or broadcast her color to all. “I could not understand such anger. I could not understand why she didn’t just give up the milk. Why cause a fuss? I thought. My own embarrassment overrode all other feelings” (pg. 101). In this section James accidentally bought spoiled milk and Ruth yelled at the store owner making a big scene, embarrassing James as a result. To sum it all up he

She has fought through adversity. She has made mistakes that made her the hero she is today. No matter what she is a hero. This is not a direct quote from James, but I imagine if asked the question of who his mother is near the end of his life this is the answer you would receive. Following the events of chicken man and the maturing that occurred in his life, James went back to his mother’s hometown to get a better understanding of who she is.”I don’t remember the name of the town where I was born, but I do remember my Jewish name: Ruchel Dwarjra 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”(pg. 3). As a result of this visit, James learned that Ruth changed her name to sound not Jewish. This rung a few bells in James' head and connected a few dots. It forced him to see the adversity that Ruth had faced from everyone around her. Even her own father gave his own set of challenges that she had to fight through. “He’d wear those black pants till they glazed and shined and were ripe enough to stand in the corner by themselves, but God helps you if those pants were coming your way in a hurry because he was nobody to fool with, my father. He was hard as a rock”(pg.2). As you can see Ruth lived