The Color of Water-Week 5, Post B

Dear James,
I sincerely enjoyed your memoir. You are a talented writer who really has a knack for appealing to the reader. There were so many emotions and events that I was able to relate to, or just understand because of your detail and feeling. I think it is quite honorable to write about your mother because it was actually beneficial to you to write this memoir. You learned about a side of your mother who you never saw. It's incredible that you lived with her your whole life and you were never given insight into this seperate life of your mother's. Clearly, you stuggled with an identity crisis for most of your life, being of mixed races. I believe that you experienced a great deal of self-acceptance when you were finally allowed into your mother's past. Even though your mother stressed all through your upbringing that you musn't identify yourself and others by race, you seemed to have great difficulty ignoring this controversial subject. Race, especially between blacks and whites, was a hot-button issue in your day. You had a father who was black and a mother who was white. That was uncommon back then. I can understand your confusion. That is why I think it was so important for you to write this memoir. You wrote about yourself AND your mother, and connecting the two was a smart move. This memoir is an inspiration to any child struggling with an identity crisis. It is important to know about your past before you can make decisions about your future.

Thank you for writing this fascinating memoir.

Sincerely,
Emily

The Color of Water-Week 5, Post A

Vocab:
-Stilted (257): Stiffly dignified or formal, as speech or literary style; pompous.
-Nebulous (262): Hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused.

Appeals:
"I watched as the worlds of blacks and whites smashed together in newsrooms and threw off chunks of human carnage that landed at my feet."(263) This passage represents an emotional appeal because obviously, the people McBride is describing are not literally ripping of human carnage from eachother and throwing them around. It is supposed to represent an emotional image the reader must create.

"The Post style section is the top of the line, the elite, the haute cuisine, the green, green grass of heaven for newspaper feature writers, and quitting there is not something you do lightly, not even for a seasoned quitter like me."(265-266) This quote represents a logical appeal because it is describing the significance of being a writer for the Washington Post.

"I envisioned her as the wise sage, sitting in a rocking chair, impassively pouring the moving details of her life into my waiting tape recorder over six weeks, maybe two months, me prodding her along, her cooperating, cringing, inching along, mother and son, hand in hand, fighting forward, emotionally wrought, until--behold! We'd be done six months later, and the world would be graced with our mighty tome." (268) This passage represents a logical appeal because it gives the reader specific details allowing the reader to envision the scene. I suppose it represents an emotional appeal as well because the reader can also imagine the emotions and feelings of the scene.

Quote:
"It was a fascinating lesson in life history--a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction marvel, to say the least. I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt."(269-270) I liked this quote because it sums up McBride's feelings about himself nicely. He seemed to be going through a constant identity crisis his entire life and now that he is finally learning about his mother's past (and part of his heritage) he is beginning to experience a feeling of self-acceptance. I think he went through his life believing that a part of him was missing and he was correct. His mother never told him anything about her life or her past and I think it ultimately halted his journey to finding out where he belongs. He must feel more complete now.

Theme:
The theme that seems present in this portion of the memoir is belonging. Trying to feel like you belong in your own skin.