The Color of Water Book Review
In this memoir, the author chooses to have two narrators, himself as one, and his mother as the other. This style makes for quite an interesting story, skipping back and forth in time, from the child's life, to that of his mother. Although many time changes occur, they are quite easy to keep up with, as the two narrator's of the book, James, and his mother, alternate chapters. For this reason, it is also very easy to compare the childhood of each of the main characters. Although the chapters aren't always during the same time periods of the respective characters, they are close enough that similarities can be seen, and parallels can be drawn. This is one of my favorite parts of the novel, seeing the main character, James, grow up with his mother Rachel.
In summary, the author tells the story of both his mother, and himself growing up. His mother was raised Jewish, but became Christian before James was born, which was thus the religion he was raised in. Both had very strict discipline, in their respective religions. The memoir focuses more on Rachel, who grows up in a Jewish family living in a country and area where Jews are not well received. After surviving this, and sexual abuse as a child, Rachel goes on to run away from home, and marries a caring black man from New York. Here she settles down, has a family, and raises twelve kids, while being constantly harassed because of her marriage, as well as her children, who are all of a different color than her. After eight children, her husband dies, and she remarries to a man of similar morals, race, and discipline. James, the final child of the original father, grows up knowing only the step-father as "daddy", and suffers the hardship...
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... their time of need. This book shows what Christianity did for Mommy, and what good came of all the Jewish friends she had from before leaving the religion.
This book's structure wasn't written perfectly, and it certainly wasn't concerned with winning any awards, but it had a purpose. It gave the author a better sense of who he is, and can give many readers much more than that; valuable lessons in life. To grade this book on things such as structure, vocabulary, and even sales would be to miss the entire point of the memoir. Read it as a memoir with great insight and a damn good owners manual on how to get along in this world, and I can guarantee you won't be let down; in fact, you will probably be quite impressed. But if what you're looking for is a book that needs to live up to the standards of a great piece of literature, you're looking in the wrong place.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is one of the most famous historical fiction books ever written. This 352 paged book has inspired many teens to acknowledge the Genocide of Baltic people. Ruta Sepetys was inspired to write a fiction book instead of a non-fiction book based on the stories she heard from survivors of the genocide during a visit to her relatives in Lithuania. She interviewed dozens of people during her stay. Between Shades of Gray was her first novel that she had written. This book was interpreted well enough by the readers to become a New York Times Bestseller.
I can relate this book to my life in many ways; it was easier for me to relate to this book because were both 18 year old girls who want to live life the right way. Also I don’t want to live life trying to be like everyone else, so this was really encouraging to me. A part that helped me was the part about confidence and how important that is. Its important to have confidence in your faith because say you get in a situation you can protect your faith and stand up for what you believe. Another part that I can really apply to my life was how when people were talking about her she didn’t even beg to know. Personally whenever I hear that someone was talking about me, I really want to know what they said! This helped me to learn that why fill my brain with negativity sinful gossip, because that’s not what Jesus would do.
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
To begin with, the dual narratives of the text here present a unique mixture of chronology and perspective. Moreover, noteworthy is also McBride’s usage of the rhetorical strategy of alternate chapters and parallelism. This can be seen when McBride remarkably places related chapters together to juxtapose the life of his mother and that of himself. This allows one to observe the parallelism in the two lives; and perhaps more importantly, understand the significance Ruth’s life has had on McBride. For example, McBride places the chapters “Shul” and “School” next to each other. Here, both Ruth and James are struggling and are trying to fit in but are rejected due to racial and social conflicts. Another example is, “The New Testament” and “The Old Testament.” Both of these chapters revolve around the embarrassment Ruth and James feel for their circumstances. In “The Ne...
In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. In the memoirs of the author’s mother and of himself, they constantly face discrimination from their race in certain neighborhoods and of their religious beliefs. The trials and tribulations faced by these two characters have taught readers universally that everyone faces difficulties in life, but they can all be surmounted.
To begin with, the dual narratives of the text here present a unique mixture of chronology and perspective. Moreover, noteworthy is also McBride’s usage of the rhetorical strategy of alternate chapters and parallelism. This can be seen when McBride remarkably places related chapters together to juxtapose the life of his mother and that of himself. This allows one to observe the parallelism in the two lives and to understand the significance Rachel's life had on McBride. For example, McBride places the chapter titled “Shul” and “School” next to each other with each giving a view of the problems they faced in school. Here both Ruth and James are struggling and are trying to fit in but are rejected due to racial and social conflicts. Another example is “The New Testament” and “The Old Testament.” Both of these chapters revolve around the embarrassm...
"My Children are black. They don't look like your children. They know that they are black, and we want it recognized. It's a positive difference, an interesting difference, and a comfortable natural difference. At least it could be so, if you teachers learned to value difference more. What you value, you talk about.'" p.12
In looking back upon his experience in Auschwitz, Primo Levi wrote in 1988: ?It is naïve, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism (Nazism) sanctifies its victims. On the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself.? (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 40). The victims of National Socialism in Levi?s book are clearly the Jewish Haftlings. Survival in Auschwitz, a book written by Levi after he was liberated from the camp, clearly makes a case that the majority of the Jews in the lager were stripped of their human dignity. The Jewish prisoners not only went through a physical hell, but they were psychologically driven under as well. Levi writes, ??the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts? We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death?? (Levi, 41). One would be hard pressed to find passages in Survival in Auschwitz that portray victims of the camp as being martyrs. The treatment of the Jews in the book explicitly spells out the dehumanization to which they were subjected. It is important to look at how the Jews were degraded in the camp, and then examine whether or not they came to embody National Socialism after this.
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
In “My Pen Writes in Blue and White,” Vincent Cremona suggests that his exposure to informal and formal speech in his household has allowed him to communicate effortlessly with a variety of individuals from all walks of life. Cremona is capable of writing in different styles such as blue collar, white collar, and a combination of both collars. The author uses his “basic, bold, and workman-like” blue collar language when speaking with construction workers that work directly under him (195). In contrast, when the author communicates with “. . . assorted managers and executives,” he uses white collar language, specifically “long-winded terms used by . . . professor[s] and textbooks” (197). In other words, Cremona is an expert in using simple
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
The relationship you have with others often has a direct effect on the basis of your very own personal identity. In the essay "On The Rainy River," the author Tim O'Brien tells about his experiences and how his relationship with a single person had effected his life so dramatically. It is hard for anyone to rely fully on their own personal experiences when there are so many other people out there with different experiences of their own. Sometimes it take the experiences and knowledge of others to help you learn and build from them to help form your own personal identity. In the essay, O'Brien speaks about his experiences with a man by the name of Elroy Berdahl, the owner of the fishing lodge that O'Brien stays at while on how journey to find himself. The experiences O'Brien has while there helps him to open his mind and realize what his true personal identity was. It gives you a sense than our own personal identities are built on the relationships we have with others. There are many influence out there such as our family and friends. Sometimes even groups of people such as others of our nationality and religion have a space in building our personal identities.
People normally tend to assume that plants in the past vary in differences and traits compared to species that are present. People have the impression that the past species had diverse weather conditions and nature related incidents forcing them adapt and become different from others. In the book, Andrew Knight had the idea that the food that was available could have tampered with their genes. Reproduction could have something to do with species changing. With plants, minor situations could determine whether they disperse a seed. It happens quickly and changes the genes of the plant causing a new formation that is disseminated through plant. Reproduction inheritance of genes is an important aspect when trying to determine ancestor’s life. By studying these pigeons, Darwin decides that all pigeons have originated from the rock-pigeon. Many people believe that pigeons have descended from a numerous amount of species and birds. Pigeons mate for life and by doing so the breeds are kept together and have markings in same areas of body. They mold into different species as years have passed because of the natural selection or an idea that Charles called unknown selection.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
The mother in the story a nameless figure with very little description and almost no voice what so ever. She is a bitter reminder of how society views some woman. They are seen as a permanent stature of a home but not necessarily a figure in society. The kids both very loud and annoying portray a selfish, rude, an almost ignorant way of society such as Jo...