Porter Lorenz

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Porter Lorenz is currently reading

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

by James McBride (Goodreads Author)

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Porter Lorenz said: " This is one of the most challenging books I have read in my life. By ‘challenging’ I don’t mean it was filled with big words and hard to pick-apart metaphors, I mean it challenged me to see from a new perspective. I am a 15-year-old boy who has 4 sis This is one of the most challenging books I have read in my life. By ‘challenging’ I don’t mean it was filled with big words and hard to pick-apart metaphors, I mean it challenged me to see from a new perspective. I am a 15-year-old boy who has 4 sisters and is a student in high school. Given that I am in high school, my pallet of views and ideas are limited compared to someone who has lived on this earth for 40 years. Reading this book opened my eyes and helped me see the world in a way I never have. Reading books like this one gives you reason and helps widen your knowledge of people, cultures, and diversity.

James McBride is a sibling to 11 other siblings, and a son to an ex-Jewish, widowed mother, and goes through his life living as a different color than his main mentor in the Brooklyn projects. He was forced to understand diversity at a young age and once “asked her (his mother) whether God was black or white.” and she responded by saying that “God’s not black. He’s not white. He’s a spirit.”(50) James goes through experiences I could not exactly imagine as his life literally is black and white. He grows up having these questions regarding race because of the diversity in his household, and he has to figure it out. When something is visibly different than the majority, you begin to ask questions and have new thoughts. James sometimes saw it as a burden because he did not see families like him, and growing up, it seemed like black and white were miles apart. At the beginning of my life, I had been exposed to almost solely white people as I lived in a white neighborhood and had 2 white parents and 2 white sisters… then my parents came home from a hospital with a new life as they had fostered an African-American baby girl. This girl is my sister. At the time, I was little and was excited because she had brown eyes like mine. At that point, eye color, skin color, hair color, height, weight, they all meant the same: a simple small difference that won’t affect one’s life majorly. This changed once I started to see hate and a thirst for separation and disconnection between human beings. I realized what my sister would be subjected to because of the color of her skin. As you could tell, my sister and my mom have had many conversations just like James and his mother Ruth have had. My world, my parents' world, and my sister’s world were changed because of indifference, however, knowledge of diversity keeps us loving and less judgmental. These experiences help us be understanding and peaceful. We know that race shouldn’t matter; but because of human nature it does, because of race we have different conversations, we have different experiences, and we have different predetermined ideas about people. This book shows people a new side of race, and how differences connect us and separate us. McBride gives us an understanding of how people can come together through contrast and how hateful people can be over disparity.

McBride shows how when either himself or Ruth are in a situation where they are like a fish in the Sahara, that the benefit from their experience in the end, regardless from what they feel about it at the moment. Ruth would ride her bicycle through the neighborhood she originally felt out of place but happy. People thought she was crazy being in a predominantly black neighborhood, riding a bike through it all the time. She Knew they felt like this and kept going. This could have been a big help for raising African American children as she has to exist freely in a diverse environment when you know what they are thinking. This may have led to her decision to send James to a public school in a predominantly Jewish area. She wanted James to exist in a diverse environment freely even when he feels uncomfortable. People in his school who “could not hide their distaste for (his) black face”(87) would help add discomfort to the situation but getting through the experience helped James be successful. McBride would be grateful for his overall experience being in a family of different colors as he states that “(He) thought it would be easier if we were just one color, black or white. (He) didn't want to be white. (His) siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that (his) Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, (he) feels privileged to have come from two worlds.”(103) Being put in new or different situations can be tough and weird and awkward and uncomfortable, but it is a big key to being an empathetic and understanding person. It almost seems like those who have seen more and experienced more in a cultural and ethnic way, become more understanding. Kind of like how when people go on mission trips or other trips like that to Guatemala, impoverished Africa or Haiti, that they come back a new person as knowledge through experience is LIFE CHANGING. The comfort zone is not the best zone. This book showed me the importance of taking a leap and challenging myself to dig deeper. What I think is bad or annoying now might be what I appreciate later because it made me who I am today! I am a more appreciative person because of you James McBride. Now it is time to thank my science teacher for giving me a ton of homework because it will help me in the long run. Just like Kelly Clarkson said: “What doesn’t kill you make you stronger”. ...more "

May 09, 2019 08:27PM · see review