The Color Of Water By Ruth Mcbride Jordan

Aaron Tiberio
ES 301
April 3, 2014

The Color of Water: Response Paper

The Color of Water is an autobiography about a woman named Ruth Mcbride Jordan. She is the mother of the author of the book, James Mcbride. Ruth is a very strong woman with a lot of faith in God. She is a Polish immigrant and she faces some hardships in the story. She immigrated to America with her Jewish and Polish family when she was just a little girl. Throughout the book, her identity is transformed through all of the events that occur with her and the other characters. All of the important things in her life consist of: religion, faith, God, education, work, and school. The reason that I say that Ruth Mcbride is a strong woman is because she has the ability to get through several hardships in her life. After reading, The Color of Water, I would state that Ruth Mcbride has obtained the identity of a strong mother with a lot of faith and confidence.
One of the biggest hardships that Ruth Mcbride faces in The Color of Water is her family past. She had a hard time discussing things from her family past such as her abusive father. Her mother, however, was pretty much sweet temperred, but her abusive father named Tateh made everything extremely difficult. Her father became a Rabbi and he sexually abused Ruth, and cheated on his wife. She soon became disowned after her family discovered that she would rather marry a black man instead of a man of Jewish faith. This separation for Ruth was extremely difficult and it is a reoccuring incident for her throughout the novel. Ruth lets all of her Jewish ties from her family go when she married Andrew Mcbride. She then converted to Christianity, and she had a tight connection with her new religion. Ruth started attendin...

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...he opposite of her father, she probably learned a lot of the positive things in her life from her mother (even though her mother still abandoned her).
In conclusion, the fact that Ruth lived through so much trauma from her father most likely brought out the strength in her heart, and caused her to realize that she wants a good life for her children instead of the trauamtic life that she lived through in her own childhood. Ruth’s overall identity could be explicity explained as a mother who is strong, has a lot of faith in God, and a woman with a lot of value and love for all of her twelve children. Ruth Mcbride’s strength and confidence helps herself through the hardships of her childhood, her relationships with Dennis and Hunter, as well as James Mcbride and the rest of her children. She developed the identity of a strong-willed mother, lover, and a woman of God.