At a Glance
- Narrator: JD Jackson narrates nearly nine hours; the five reviews are personal and detailed but never touch the reading itself.
- Subjects: Race and identity across a mixed family, faith, resilience, a mother's hidden past finally told.
- Tone: Intimate and searching, moving between two braided life stories without losing either thread.
- Bottom line: A rewarding memoir for readers of family history and American identity, and a strong entry point into James McBride's work.
Coming home for a family visit turned out to be exactly the right setting for this audiobook, a memoir built entirely around one family's buried history. James McBride wrote The Color of Water before The Good Lord Bird went on to win the National Book Award for Fiction, and reviewer veronica lake credits this earlier book, alongside McBride's later Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, with sparking what that review calls a lifelong James McBride fandom, calling this earlier book Fantastic and describing McBride as, in the review's words, a writer I always recommend.
Teaching Her Children That God Is the Color of Water
Ruth McBride Jordan is a self-declared light-skinned woman, evasive about her ethnicity for most of her life, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past alongside his own upbringing, growing up amid what the synopsis terms orchestrated chaos alongside his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. He describes his mother, whom the family called Mommy, as a fiercely protective woman with dark eyes full of pep and fire, someone who herded her children to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them to the best and mainly Jewish schools she could find, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw her as a source of embarrassment and confusion, and it took him until his thirties to start uncovering the truth about her early life, the worry, and the confusion finally giving way to something closer to understanding.
McBride's own story alternates with Ruth's throughout the book, hers retraced through her own searing, spirited voice. She was born Rachel Shilsky, actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska, in Poland in 1921, the daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi. Her family fled pogroms and settled in Suffolk, Virginia, where anti-Semitism and racial tension ran high. She describes a loveless marriage, a fragile and handicapped mother, and a cruel, sexually abusive father. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia for New York City, she married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her own Red Hook living room, teaching her children that, in her words, God is the color of water. Twice widowed afterward, and facing what the synopsis calls overwhelming adversity and racism throughout, Ruth's determination, drive, and discipline saw her dozen children through college, and most through graduate school as well.
Two Authors, Telling It as an Interesting Weave
Reviews here run unusually personal, several of them functioning almost as their own short memoirs. Mark Lieberman goes further into specifics than most, noting Ruth's father was an Orthodox rabbi, that a marriage within the family was arranged rather than chosen, and that the household kept kosher, details that add real texture to the version of the story the synopsis only summarizes. Su S calls out the back-and-forth structure specifically, noting the two authors, meaning McBride writing Ruth's chapters and his own side by side, tell their stories as an interesting weave rather than a straight chronology. Denise H, who describes not normally being a huge reader, still finished it and gave it four stars, calling the book universally relatable and a roller coaster with real ups and downs. Cynthia G. Allen was struck by how Ruth never lost herself despite raising twelve children through repeated hardship, and thanks McBride directly for sharing his mother's life with readers.
At sixty-five, on top of everything already asked of her, Ruth earned her own degree in social work from Temple University. That's the arc the reviews keep circling back to: not just survival, but a late, hard-won accomplishment entirely on her own terms.
Five Reviews Silent on Jackson's Narration
Something worth naming directly: five reviews here, several of them long and deeply personal, covering family history, structure, and emotional impact, and not one mentions JD Jackson's narration specifically. For a memoir built around two distinct first-person voices, McBride's and Ruth's, alternating chapter by chapter, I'd have expected at least a passing comment on how that alternation actually sounds read aloud. None of the five reviews go there, so the audio performance itself remains untested by anything visible to me. That's a genuine gap for a memoir where the two alternating voices, McBride looking back and Ruth finally speaking after decades of silence, are doing so much of the emotional work.
Rating math is worth a quick note too: 4.6 stars from 11 ratings works out to a total of 51 points out of a possible 55, four points short of a perfect sweep across every rating. That's a small, specific gap, not a real mystery, just a reminder that a couple of ratings likely landed below five stars even though the written reviews on display are uniformly glowing.
Relatable Enough to Finish Without a Reading Habit
This is for readers of American memoir and family history, especially anyone interested in mixed-race identity, Jewish history in America, or Brooklyn's postwar black communities. It also works as a strong entry point into McBride's writing generally, given how directly it connects to his later, better-known books according to the reviews here. Denise H's experience is worth remembering too: someone who says reading isn't usually a habit still found this one relatable enough to finish and rate highly, which suggests the book doesn't require a background in memoir or family history to land.
Look elsewhere for a linear, single-narrator memoir rather than one that moves between two intertwined life stories, since the structure here asks you to hold both threads at once. For anyone drawn to family history told with this much honesty about its harder chapters, this is a rewarding, substantial listen.
Good to Know
How long is The Color of Water audiobook?
It runs eight hours and forty-six minutes, narrated by JD Jackson. The memoir alternates between James McBride's own upbringing and his mother Ruth's earlier life story, so the runtime covers two intertwined narratives rather than a single straight, linear timeline from start to finish.
Do the reviews mention JD Jackson's narration on The Color of Water audiobook?
No. Five detailed, personal reviews cover family history, structure, and emotional impact, but none comment on the narration specifically, leaving nothing at all on record yet about how the two alternating voices come across in the finished, produced audio performance.
Why does The Color of Water audiobook show a 4.6 rating instead of a perfect 5.0?
The eleven visible ratings total 51 out of a possible 55 points, four points short of a perfect sweep. That means most ratings landed at five stars, with at least a couple falling slightly below, consistent with the otherwise glowing written reviews.
