description: The Color of Water (1997) is the bestselling memoir of James McBride, a biracial journalist, jazz saxophonist, and composer whose Jewish mother gave birth to twelve children, all of whom she raised in a housing project in Brooklyn. His mother witnessed the premature death of her first husband, a reverend, and through sheer force of will saw each of her children graduate from college. Her basic household tenets rested on the importance of academic success and the church, and many of her children moved on to earn graduate and professional degrees.
language: English
title: The Color of Water
titlecomplete: The Color of Water
genres: Biography, Book Club, Memoir, Nonfiction, School, Audiobook, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, Race, African American
ratings_count: 119737
awards: awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Long Island Reads
publisher: Audio Literature