The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother

…author with his first book, The Color of Water, a memoir of his white, Jewish mother. McBride went on to win a National Book Award for his novel The Good Lord Bird, which tells the story of an enslaved boy who joins the crusade of abolitionist John Brown. In order…

McBride published his first book, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, in 1996, a memoir of his upbringing and his mother’s childhood as a European immigrant who was raised in the American South by a domineering father in an Orthodox Jewish household. The book…