Growing up in a multiracial family can be confusing, especially if your family history has been kept secret for years. This is the problem with James McBride, whose struggle for his identity prevented him from truly understanding and accepting who he was and where his family came from. The Color of Water depicts the lives of James McBride, a young African-American Jewish man who is searching for his identity, and his mother, Ruth McBride, a devout Christian who was born and raised Jewish but refuses to tell him. children about his troubling past. James demonstrates that in order to find one's identity, one must first understand where it comes from. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Raised by his white mother, James often spent most of his childhood feeling confused about his identity due to his mother's secret past. His mother, Ruth, chose to never talk about her childhood or her family and instead focused on promoting the religion, education, and privacy of all her children. “She insisted on absolute privacy, excellent school grades and did not trust any strangers, regardless of race. We were instructed never to reveal the details of our home life to any authority figure: teachers, social workers, cops, shopkeepers, or even friends” (McBride 27). Ruth's teachings took a toll on James' growth, as he was taught to never open up to anyone. Trying to cope with his confusion, James resorts to creating a fictional version of himself, who he talks to while looking in the mirror. He creates this imaginary version of himself because he wants to see what his life would be like if his life were simpler. “To escape further from the painful reality, I created an imaginary world for myself. I locked myself in the bathroom and spent long hours playing with him. He looked like me. I looked at him... I turned to leave, but when I turned around, he was still there, waiting for me. I had an inner pain, a craving, but I didn't know where it came from or why I had it. The boy in the mirror didn't seem to be in pain. He was free. I hated him” (90-91). James resents "the boy in the mirror" because he wishes he could be like him, free of worry and confusion. The boy James creates is what James wants his life to be: simple, instead of confusing. During his teenage years, James becomes angry and begins to act out to cope with the pain of not understanding who he is. He chooses to follow the wrong path; turning to drugs and alcohol and dropping out of school to the point where he decided to drop out. “I was obviously hiding, and I was angry too, but I would never admit it to myself. The wonderful, orchestrated chaos that Mom had so painstakingly constructed to keep her house running smoothly collapsed” (140). Ruth finally can't deal with it anymore and sends him to stay with her sister, Jack, and her husband in Kentucky. In order to feel accepted by older men, James begins spending his free time at a local hangout known as "The Corner". Spending time on the corner allowed James to free his mind of all his problems: "I was fifteen on the corner but I could act like I was twenty-five, and no one cared. I could hide. Nobody knew me. No one knew my past, my white mother, my dead father, nothing. It was perfect. My problems seemed far, far away” (147). The Corner became the place where James could get away from his identity problem. There he had.