The Color Of Water – A Black Man’s Tribute To His White Mother

James McBride's memoir is both his own story and a tribute to his mother, Ruth. He grew up with eleven siblings in the all-black Red Hook projects of Brooklyn, his father a black minister and his mother a woman who refused to acknowledge being white and who saw all twelve children through college. Only as an adult did he learn her history: born in Poland to a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was raised in Suffolk, Virginia, left for New York, married a black man and founded a black Baptist church in her living room. Chapters alternate between McBride's account of his early life and Ruth's memories in her own voice.

CCKPartners chief executive Colleen McCreary said it conveys the emotions and new understandings of race that come through one family's history.