The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
James McBride, 1996
Penguin Group USA
352pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594481925
Summary
Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.
The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn.
"Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion—and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain.
In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned.
At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college—and most through graduate school.
At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self-realization and professional success.
The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1957
• Where—New York, New York
• Education—Oberlin Conservatory of Music; M.A., Columbia University
• Awards—American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award,
1996; ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award, 1996;
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA
James McBride's bestselling memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, explores the author's struggle to understand his biracial identity and the experience of his white, Jewish mother, who moved to Harlem, married a black man, and raised 12 children. His first novel, Miracle at St. Anna (film version by Spike Lee), followed a black regiment through turbulent events in Italy late in World War II. It was a book of considerable breadth and character diversity.
Readers may not know that the multitalented McBride has another dual identity: He's trained as a musician and a writer and has been highly successful in both careers.
After getting his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University at the age of 22, he began a career in journalism that would include stints as staff writer at the Boston Globe, People magazine, and the Washington Post. But McBride also loved writing and performing music, and at age 30, he quit his job as a feature writer at the Washington Post to pursue a music career in New York. After Anita Baker recorded a song he'd written, "Good Enough," McBride had enough contacts in the industry to spend the next eight years as a professional musician, writing, recording, and performing (he plays the saxophone).
He was playing tenor sax for jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott while he wrote The Color of Water "on airplanes and in hotels." Like the jazz music McBride plays, the book alternates voices, trading off between McBride's perspective and that of his mother. The Color of Water was a worldwide success, selling millions of copies and drawing high praise from book critics. "This moving and unforgettable memoir needs to be read by people of all colors and faiths," wrote Publishers Weekly. It now appears on reading lists at high schools and colleges around the country.
After the enormous success of The Color of Water, McBride felt some pressure to continue writing memoirs, or at least to continue with the theme of race relations in America. Instead, he turned to fiction, and although his second book draws part of its inspiration from family history, it isn't autobiographical. "My initial aim was to write a novel about a group of black soldiers who liberate a concentration camp in Eastern Europe," McBride explains on his web site. "I read lots of books and spent a lot of time researching the subject but soon came to the realization that I'm not qualified to write about the holocaust. It's too much." Instead, he recalled the war stories of his uncle and cousin, who served in the all-black 92nd Infantry Division, and began researching World War II in Italy—particularly the clashes between Italian Partisans and the German army.
The resulting novel, Miracle at St. Anna, is "an intricate mosaic of narratives that ultimately becomes about betrayal and the complex moral landscape of war" (the New York Times Book Review) and has earned high marks from critics for its nuanced portrayal of four Buffalo Soldiers and the Italian villagers they encounter. McBride, perhaps not surprisingly, likens writing fiction to playing jazz: "You are the soloist and the characters are the bandleaders, the Duke Ellingtons and Count Basies. They present the song, and you must play it as they determine.
Extras
• McBride has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Gary Burton, and the PBS television character Barney. He has also written the score for several musicals and currently leads a 12-piece jazz/R&B band.
• One of his most taxing assignments as a journalist was to cover Michael Jackson's 1984 Victory Tour for six months. "I thought I was going to lose my mind," he told USA Today.
• For a book fair, he performed with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band made up of writers including Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Ridley Pearson. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
For years James McBride was puzzled, even repulsed by his mother. She was strange. She was, in fact, far stranger than McBride suspected. It isn't until well into adulthood that McBride learns her story.
A LitLovers LitPick - (Nov '07)
Suffused with issues of race, religion and identity. Yet those issues, so much a part of their lives and stories, are not central. The triumph of the book--and of their lives—is that race and religion are transcended in these interwoven histories by family love, the sheer force of a mother's will and her unshakable insistence that only two things really mattered: school and church...it is her voice—unique, incisive, at once unsparing and ironic—that is dominant in this paired history, and its richest contribution....The two stories, son's and mother's, beautifully juxtaposed, strike a graceful note at a time of racial polarization.
The New York Times Book Review
At a time when the relationship between African-Americans and Jews is deeply fissured, The Color of Water reminds us that the two groups have a long history of coexistence—sometimes within a single person. The author's mother, Ruth Shilsky, was born in Poland in 1920, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. She grew up in rural Virginia, hemmed in by anti-Semitism and small-town claustrophobia, and at the age of 18 she fled to the cultural antipodes of Harlem. There, four years later, she married a black man named Dennis McBride, and since her family promptly disowned her, she launched a second existence as (to quote her son) "a flying compilation of competing interests and conflicts, a black woman in white skin." The lone Caucasian in her Brooklyn housing project, she somehow raised 12 children without ever quite admitting she was white. In retrospect, of course, her son is able to recognize that his parents "brought a curious blend of Jewish-European and African-American distrust and paranoia into our house." However, as children, James McBride and his 11 siblings didn't dwell on questions of their mother's color. Only later, after he became a professional journalist, did McBride feel compelled to tackle the riddle of his heritage. Bit by bit, he coaxed out his mother's story, and her voice -- stoic, funny, and with a matter-of-fact flintiness—alternates perfectly with his own tale of biracial confusion and self-discovery.
James Marcus - Salon
The need to clarify his racial identity prompted the author to penetrate his veiled and troubled family history. Ruth McBride Jordan concealed her former life as Rachel Deborah Shilsky, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, from her children. Her grim upbringing in an abusive environment is left behind when she moves to Harlem, marries a black man, converts to Christianity, and cofounds a Baptist congregation with her husband. The courage and tenacity shown by this twice-widowed mother who manages to raise 12 children, all of whom go on to successful careers, are remarkable. Highly recommended for public libraries. The Color of Water [will] make you proud to be a member of the human race. —Linda Bredengerd, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib., Bradford, Pa
Library Journal
"An eloquent narrative in which a young black man searches for his roots--against the wishes of his mother. Mc Bride, a professional saxophonist and former staff writer for the Boston Globe and Washington Post, grew up with 11 siblings in an all-black Brooklyn, New York, housing project. As a child, he became aware that his mother was different from others around him: She was white, and she kept secrets...McBride's mother should take much pleasure in this loving if sometimes uncomfortable memoir, which embodies family values of the best kind. Other readers will take pleasure in it as well.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss Ruth McBride's refusal to reveal her past and how that influenced her children's sense of themselves and their place in the world. How has your knowledge—or lack thereof—about your family background shaped your own self-image?
2. The McBride children's struggle with their identities led each to his or her own "revolution." Is it also possible that that same struggle led them to define themselves through professional achievement?
3. Several of the McBride children became involved in the civil rights movement. Do you think that this was a result of the times in which they lived, their need to belong to a group that lent them a solid identity, or a combination of these factors?
4. "Our house was a combination three-ring circus and zoo, complete with ongoing action, daring feats, music, and animals." Does Helen leave to escape her chaotic homelife or to escape the mother whose very appearance confuses her about who she is?
5. "It was in her sense of education, more than any other, that Mommy conveyed her Jewishness to us." Do you agree with this statement? Is it possible that Ruth McBride Jordan's unshakable devotion to her faith, even though she converted to Christianity from Judaism, stems from her Orthodox Jewish upbringing?
6. "Mommy's contradictions crashed and slammed against one another like bumper cars at Coney Island. White folks, she felt, were implicitly evil toward blacks, yet she forced us to go to white schools to get the best education. Blacks could be trusted more, but anything involving blacks was probably substandard... She was against welfare and never applied for it despite our need, but championed those who availed themselves of it." Do you think these contradictions served to confuse Ruth's children further, or did they somehow contribute to the balanced view of humanity that James McBride possesses?
7. While reading the descriptions of the children's hunger, did you wonder why Ruth did not seek out some kind of assistance?
8. Do you think it was naïve of Ruth McBride Jordan to think that her love for her family and her faith in God would overcome all potential obstacles or did you find her faith in God's love and guidance inspiring?
9. How do you feel about Ruth McBride Jordan's use of a belt to discipline her children?
10. While reading the book, were you curious about how Ruth McBride Jordan's remarkable faith had translated into the adult lives of her children? Do you think that faith is something that can be passed on from one generation to the next or do you think that faith that is instilled too strongly in children eventually causes them to turn away from it?
11. Do you think it would be possible to achieve what Ruth McBride has achieved in today's society?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage
Susan Squire, 2008
Bloomsbury USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781582341194
In Brief
A provocative survey of marriage and what it has meant for society, politics, religion, and the home.
For ten thousand years, marriage—and the idea of marriage—has been at the very foundation of human society. In this provocative and ambitious book, Susan Squire unravels the turbulent history and many implications of our most basic institution. Starting with the discovery, long before recorded time, that sex leads to paternity (and hence to couplehood), and leading up to the dawn of the modern “love marriage,” Squire delves into the many ways men and women have come together and what the state of their unions has meant for history, society, and politics – especially the politics of the home.
This book is the product of thirteen years of intense research, but even more than the intellectual scope, what sets it apart is Squire’s voice and contrarian boldness. Learned, acerbic, opinionated, and funny, she draws on everything from Sumerian mythology to Renaissance theater to Victorian housewives’ manuals (sometimes all at the same time) to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic view of the many things marriage has been and meant. The result is a book to provoke and fascinate readers of all ideological stripes: feminists, traditionalists, conservatives, and progressives alike. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
Susan Squire is the author of The Slender Balance, For Better, For Worse: A Candid Chronicle of Five Couples Adjusting to Parenthood and the best-selling essay collection, The Bitch in the House. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Playboy, New York magazine, and the Washington Post, among many others. She lives in New York City with her husband of nineteen years. (From the publisher.)
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Critics Say . . .
It's not always easy to follow the hops and skips of Squire's logical structure, and at times her penchant for one-linery gets in the way of her argument as opposed to helping it along. But I Don't is a charming book and a wonderful resource for those who think they have a bead on why the church and everyone purporting to speak for the church got themselves so firmly entrenched in the marriage business in the first place.
Dahlia Lithwick - New York Times
Fascinating.... Valuable insight into an institution that has recently been transformed yet again.
Boston Globe
Squire archly reconsiders the disobedient Biblical helpmeet Eve (‘Shouldn’t the buck stop with the senior officer, not the assistant?’), as well as witches, bitches, nymphomaniacs, concubines, clerics, cuckolds, and others.... Take this potent, hugely entertaining book to bed.
O - Oprah Magazine
In breezy, irreverent prose, Squire (The Slender Balance) catalogues the history and religious significance of the institution of marriage from Adam and Eve to the Renaissance and beyond. Writing as if gossiping with a girlfriend, Squire argues that marriage was developed to establish paternity by controlling the sex life of women. We learn that the men of Athens had hetaera (courtesans) to entertain them, concubines for their daily "need" and wives with whom to breed legitimate children; the women of Rome, on the other hand, learned how to use their power to threaten male rule of society. The New Testament offers equality to husband and wife, at least in the marriage bed; the association of lust with Eve's original sin can be attributed to Augustine. Squire explores sixth-century penitentials on sexual sins, adultery in the Middle Ages and the intersection of wife and witch during the Renaissance inquisitions. Readers are left questioning whether our modern idea of love matches might end up as a chapter in a future book about the incarnations of marriage. "Love may not be the answer, but for now, it is the story."
Publishers Weekly
Squire (The Slender Balance) begins with Genesis and works through biblical and secular history through Martin Luther, deconstructing marriage with a vengeance. Like Fox-Genovese, Squire does not pretend to be unbiased in her negative view of historical marriage, especially in terms of Christian history. The subtitle describes the book as "contrarian," but that is almost too mild a term to describe Squire's sarcastic yet breezy style, which while very amusing, is sure to offend many readers as she gleefully surveys Western history. Squire is mainly concerned with the subjugation of women within the strictures of marriage as a social and religious convention. Both works are passionate intellectual manifestos, with completely different tones and aims, and both are recommended for sociology and women's history collections.
Elizabeth Morris - Library Journal
The roots of Western ideas about getting hitched, from early humans up to Martin Luther. That's right, Martin Luther, who used sermons on the "godliness" of marriage as an opportunity to stick yet another finger in the Pope's eye and in 1525 gave up a lifetime of celibacy to get married himself. Squire (For Better or for Worse: A Candid Chronicle of Five Couples Adjusting to Parenthood, 1993, etc.) halts her history of marriage there, contending that "as the Protestant influence spreads across Europe...so does its marital vision, which is essentially Luther's." Well, maybe, but surely the last 500 years of marital theories could stand a bit more scrutiny. For the millennia she does cover, Squire pores over classical and medieval diaries, treatises on marriage and religious tracts on why women are inferior, and her narrative moves at a brisk pace. She argues that marriage was basically designed to protect fragile male egos so they could retain the sense of power they needed to project in society. It had no such positive aspects for women, who were constantly accused either of being insatiably intent on sexual variety or of being needling shrews; marriage was an instrument to control them. Despite the subtitle, readers with any knowledge of the subject will find little new information or "contrarian" analysis here; the less well-informed will probably find their worst suspicions confirmed. Squire detracts from her argument with a jarringly jocular tone-giving historical figures silly nicknames, for example. Cutting off the story in 1546 (the year of Luther's death) makes her claim to be revealing something about modern marriage nothing short of ridiculous. Lively and a pleasure to read, but falls well short of what it promises.
Kirkus Reviews
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Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for I Don't:
1. Can you sum up how Squire presents the history of the church's involvement in marriage? If you accept her approach, what are the implications for today's society? (Right, this is a huge question—it's, like, the whole book. Still...give it a try.)
2. What about Adam and Eve? Who took the fall, so to speak, and why? Who should have taken the fall?
3. What did Martin Luther's believe about marriage, and how did his views differ from the Pope's?
4. What does Squire suggest was the purpose of marriage in the first place? Has that purpose changed over the millennia?
5. Talk about the role of women, historically, in marriage and how it has changed. For better, for worse? Or, honestly?...not at all?
6. What have you learned, if anything, about the history of marriage. Does this book change your ideas of marriage...as a sacred or secular institution?
7. Consider the title: "A Contrarian History of Marriage." Did some of Squire's contrarian views offend you? Do you think she is too contrarian, too politically oriented to offer an objective view of marriage? Or is she simply laying out historical evidence—and allowing readers to judge for themselves?
8. Squire ends her history in 1546. Would you like to have seen her history extended to the present day...or at least for a couple of hundred more years?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
Wes Moore, 2010
Random House
250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385528207
Summary
Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a year of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.
In December of 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship.
The same paper ran a huge story about four young men who had killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One of their names was Wes Moore
Wes Moore, the Rhodes Scholar, became obsessed with the story of this man he’d never met but who shared much more than space in the same newspaper. Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had had difficult childhoods.
After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he finally he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting Wes: Who are you? Where did it go wrong for you? How did this happen?
That letter led to a correspondence and deepening relationship that has lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: they were both fatherless, were both in and out of school; they’d hung out onsimilar corners with similar crews, and had run into trouble with the police.
And they had both felt a desire for something better for themselves and their families—and the sense that something better was always just out of reach. At each stage of their young lives, they came across similar moments of decision that would alter their fates
Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heartwrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Reared—Bronx, New York, New York
• Education—B.A., Johns Hopkins University; M. Litt, Oxford
University
• Awards—Rhodes Scholar
• Currently—lives in New Jersey
Wes Moore is a Rhodes Scholar and a combat veteran of Afghanistan. As a White House Fellow, he worked as a special assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice at the State Department. He was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, was named one of Ebony magazine’s Top 30 Leaders Under 30 (2007), and, most recently, was dubbed one of the top young business leaders in New York by Crain’s New York Business. He works in New York City. (From the publisher.)
More
Wes Moore is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, promising business leader and author.
Wes graduated Phi Theta Kappa as a commissioned officer from Valley Forge Military College in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations. At Johns Hopkins he was honored by the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame. He completed an M Litt in International Relations from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. Wes was a para-trooper and Captain in the United States Army, serving a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in 2005–2006.
Wes spearheaded the American strategic support plan for the Afghan Reconciliation Program that unites former insurgents with the new Afghan Government. He is recognized as an authority on the rise and ramifica-tions of radical Islamism in the Western Hemisphere. A White House Fellow from 2006–2007, Wes served as a Special Assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Following his time at the White House, Wes became an investment professional in New York at Citigroup, focusing on global technology and alternative investments. In 2009 he was selected as an Asia Society Fellow. Moore was named one of Ebony magazine’s “Top 30 Leaders Under 30” for 2007 and Crain’s New York Business “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” in 2009.
Wes is passionate about supporting U.S. veterans and examining the roles education, mentoring and public service play in the lives of American youth. He serves on the board of the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and founded an organization called STAND! through Johns Hopkins that works with Baltimore youth involved in the criminal justice system. Wes was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver and addressed the crowd from Invesco Field. He has also spoken at the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) Business Plan Competition, Southern Regional Conference of the National Society of Educators, the education reform session of the third annual Race & Reconciliation in America conference, and the first 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance.
He has been featured by such media outlets as People magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, CSPAN, and MSNBC, amongst others. Wes’ first book, The Other Wes Moore, was published by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, in 2010.
Wes Moore was born in 1978 and was three years old when his father, a respected radio and television host, died in front of him. His mother, hoping for a better future for her family, made great sacrifices to send Wes and his sisters to private school. Caught between two worlds—the affluence of his classmates and the struggles of his neighbors—Wes began to act out, succumbing to bad grades, suspensions, and delinquencies. Desperate to reverse his behavior, his mother sent him to military school in Pennsylvania. After trying to escape five times, Wes finally decided to stop railing against the system and become accountable for his actions. By graduation six years later, Moore was company commander overseeing 125 cadets.
On December 11, 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran an article about how Wes, despite his troubled childhood, had just received The Rhodes Scholarship. At the same time, The Sun was running stories—eventually more than 100 in all—about four African-American men who were arrested for the murder of an off-duty Baltimore police officer during an armed robbery. One of the men convicted was just two years older than Wes, lived in the same neighborhood, and in an uncanny turn, was also named Wes Moore.
Wes wondered how two young men from the same city, who were around the same age, and even shared a name, could arrive at two completely different destinies. The juxtaposition between their lives, and the questions it raised about accountability, chance, fate and family, had a profound impact on Wes. He decided to write to the other Wes Moore, and much to his surprise, a month later he received a letter back. He visited the other Wes in prison over a dozen times, spoke with his family and friends, and discovered startling parallels between their lives: both had difficult childhoods, they were both fatherless, were having trouble in the classroom; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and had run into trouble with the police. Yet at each stage of their lives, at similar moments of decision, they would head down different paths towards astonishingly divergent destinies. Wes realized in their two stories was a much larger tale about the conse-quences of personal responsibility and the imperativeness of education and community for a generation of boys searching for their way.
Seeking to help other young people to redirect their lives, Wes is committed to being a positive influence and helping kids find the support they need to enact change. Pointing out that a high school student drops out every nine seconds, Wes says that public servants—the teachers, mentors and volunteers who work with our youth—are as imperative to our national standing and survival as are our armed forces. “Public service does not have to be an occupation,” he says, “but it must be a way of life.”
Moore lives with his wife Dawn in New Jersey. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The author emphasizes that the point of his book is not to depict a "good" Wes Moore and a "bad" Wes Moore. He says he wanted to illustrate not the differences between their lives but the similarities, particularly what it's like to grow up without a father in the house — an experience he shares with an estimated one out of three children, according to 2009 U.S. Census Bureau data. Moore's hope is that his story will encourage Americans to step in at crucial moments to help other troubled 12-year-olds. "It's not a race issue," he says. "It's a national issue which threatens the future of the United States. We're spending billions on prisons. Mathematically, it's unsustainable."
Deirdre Donahue - USA Today
(Starred review.) Two hauntingly similar boys take starkly different paths in this searing tale of the ghetto. Moore, an investment banker, Rhodes scholar, and former aide to Condoleezza Rice, was intrigued when he learned that another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, was wanted for killing a cop. Meeting his double and delving into his life reveals deeper likenesses: raised in fatherless families and poor black neighborhoods, both felt the lure of the money and status to be gained from dealing drugs. That the author resisted the criminal underworld while the other Wes drifted into it is chalked up less to character than to the influence of relatives, mentors, and expectations that pushed against his own delinquent impulses, to the point of exiling him to military school. Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures—poverty, a lack of prospects, the need to respond to violence with greater violence—that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The author examines eight years in the lives of both Wes Moores to explore the factors and choices that led one to a Rhodes scholarship, military service, and a White House fellowship, and the other to drug dealing [and] prison.... Moore ends this haunting look at two lives with a call to action and a detailed resource guide. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Other Wes Moore:
1. How well does Moore describe the culture of the streets, where young boys grow up believing that violence transforms them into men? Talk about the street culture—its violence, drug dealing, disdain for education. What creates that ethos and why do so many young men find it attractive?
2. In writing about the Wes Moore who is in prison, Wes Moore the author says, "The chilling truth is that his life could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his." What do you make of that statement? Do you think Moore is correct?
3. Oprah Winfrey has said that "when you hear this story, it's going to turn the way you think about free will and fate upside down." So, which is it...freedom or determinism? If determinism, what kind of determinism—God, cosmic fate, environment, biology, psychology? Or if freedom, to what degree are we free to choose and create our own destiny?
4. The overriding question of this book is what critical factors in the lives of these two men, who were similar in many ways, created such a vast difference in their destinies?
5. Talk about the role of family—and especially the present or absence of fathers—in the lives of children. Consider the role of the two mothers, Joy and Mary, as well as the care of the author's grandparents in this book.
6. Why did young Wes, who ran away from military school five times, finally decide to stay put?
7. Why was the author haunted by the story of his namesake? What was the reason he insisted on meeting him in prison? Talk about the awkwardness of the two Weses' first meeting and their gradual openness and sharing with one another.
8. From prison, the other Wes responded to the author's initial letter with his own letter, in which he said, "When you're in here, you think people don't even know you're alive anymore." Talk about the power of hope versus hopelessness for those imprisoned. What difference can it make to a prisoner to know that he or she is remembered?
8. The author Wes asked the prisoner Wes, "when did you first know you were a man?" Talk about the significance of that question...and how each man responded.
9. Has this book left you with any ideas for ameliorating the conditions that led to the imprisonment of the other Wes Moore? What can be done to ensure a more productive life for the many young men who grow up on the streets?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Spoken from the Heart
Laura Bush, 2010
Simon & Schuster
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439155202
Summary
Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura Welch grew up as an only child in a family that lost three babies to miscarriage or infant death. She vividly evokes Midland's brash, rugged culture, her close relationship with her father, and the bonds of early friendships that sustain her to this day. For the first time, in heart-wrenching detail, she writes about the devastating high school car accident that left her friend Mike Douglas dead and about her decades of unspoken grief.
When Laura Welch first left West Texas in 1964, she never imagined that her journey would lead her to the world stage and the White House. After graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1968, in the thick of student rebellions across the country and at the dawn of the women's movement, she became an elementary school teacher, working in inner-city schools, then trained to be a librarian. At age thirty, she met George W. Bush, whom she had last passed in the hallway in seventh grade. Three months later, "the old maid of Midland married Midland's most eligible bachelor."
With rare intimacy and candor, Laura Bush writes about her early married life as she was thrust into one of America's most prominent political families, as well as her deep longing for children and her husband's decision to give up drinking. By 1993, she found herself in the full glare of the political spotlight. But just as her husband won the Texas governorship in a stunning upset victory, her father, Harold Welch, was dying in Midland.
In 2001, after one of the closest elections in American history, Laura Bush moved into the White House. Here she captures presidential life in the harrowing days and weeks after 9/11, when fighter-jet cover echoed through the walls and security scares sent the family to an underground shelter. She writes openly about the White House during wartime, the withering and relentless media spotlight, and the transformation of her role as she began to understand the power of the first lady.
One of the first U.S. officials to visit war-torn Afghanistan, she also reached out to disease-stricken African nations and tirelessly advocated for women in the Middle East and dissidents in Burma. She championed programs to get kids out of gangs and to stop urban violence. And she was a major force in rebuilding Gulf Coast schools and libraries post-Katrina. Movingly, she writes of her visits with U.S. troops and their loved ones, and of her empathy for and immense gratitude to military families.
With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress.
She writes with honesty and eloquence about her family, her public triumphs, and her personal tribulations. Laura Bush's compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other first lady's memoir ever written. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 4, 1946
• Where—Midland, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Southern Methodist University; M.A.,
University of Texas, Austin
• Currently—lives in Crawford, Texas
Laura Bush was First Lady of the United States, the wife of George W. Bush, the 43rd President.
Bush has had a love for books and reading since childhood, and her life and education have reflected that interest. She graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in education, and soon took a job as a second grade school teacher. After attaining her Master's degree in Library Science at the University of Texas at Austin, she was employed as a librarian. She met George Walker Bush in 1977, and they were married later that year. In 1981, the couple had twin daughters.
Bush's political involvement began with her marriage. She campaigned in her husband's unsuccessful 1978 run for the United States Congress and later his successful Texas gubernatorial campaign. As First Lady of Texas, Bush implemented many initiatives focused on health, education, and literacy. In 1999, she aided her husband in campaigning for the presidency of the United States in a number of ways, most notably delivering a keynote address at the 2000 Republican National Convention; this gained her national attention. She became first lady after her husband defeated Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Polled by Gallup as one of the most popular first ladies, Laura Bush was involved in topics of both national and global concern during her tenure. She continued to advance her trademark interests of education and literacy by establishing the annual National Book Festival in 2001 and encouraged education on a worldwide scale. She also advanced women's causes through The Heart Truth and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She represented the United States during her foreign trips, which tended to focus on HIV/AIDS and malaria awareness. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A deeply felt, keenly observed account of her childhood and youth in Texas—an account that captures a time and place with exacting emotional precision and that demonstrates how Mrs. Bush's lifelong love of books has imprinted her imagination.
New York Times
Mrs. Bush's delicate rendering...sets this book far apart from the typical score-settling reminiscences of politicians or their spouses... Spoken from the Heart reveals Laura Bush to be a beautiful writer, a keen observer and a tender soul who drew on her roots to live a life in the public eye with compassion and grace.
Wall Street Journal
Laura Bush's autobiography, Spoken From the Heart, begins promisingly enough for anyone hoping to penetrate [the] surface.... It is a shame that [it] was, in the end, overly edited by the head. Because Laura Bush, with an ear trained by all those hours curled up with novels, clearly has more to tell, if she so chooses.
Washington Post
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Spoken from the Heart:
1. Laura Welch learned that her grandmother had lost two children, but no one new the entire story—because it was never discussed. "You might talk about the wind and the weather, but troubles you swallowed deep down inside." In what way does this training—suppressing unpleasant information—prepare her for the life ahead?
2. How does Laura describe her growing up as an only child? What was it like for her eventually to marry into the large, boisterous Bush family? How hard do you think it was for the once shy girl who went on "solo picnics" to fit in?
3. How does Laura Bush frame the terrible car accident that happened when she was 17? She writes that so many lives were wrecked that night at that corner." Talk about the accident and its aftermath.
4. If you are "of an age," how well does Laura capture the tone and tenor of the 1950s and '60s? She grew up in Texas, but are there similarities to your childhood years?
5. Laura Bush doesn't talk about how she felt watching so many of her friends marry...and she, herself, not marrying until the day after her 31th birthday. She learned of a friend's remark that "the most eligible bachelor in Midland" married "the old maid of Midland." She says she thought it was funny. Do you believe her?
6. How does she explain the whirlwind courtship with her future husband? Does she discuss what drew her—a once shy, bookish young woman who read Tolstoy by the poolside—to an outgoing jock-turned-oil-man? How does she talk about their differences...and what holds their marriage together?
7. What does she mean that she and George, as a young married couple, "were the outliers on the Bush family curve"?
8. How does Laura talk about her relationship with her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush? How did the relationship evolve?
9. In what ways did Laura's life change from being first lady of Texas to being First Lady of the United States? Did you/do you ever envy her positions? Would you find it exciting...or terrifying...to be the wife of the President of the United States?
10. How does Laura defend the her husband's decision to declare war on Iraq? And his response to hurricane Katrina?
11. Talk about how she felt on her return to private life in Texas in 2009. What does she mean when she says, "I could at last exhale"?
12. Laura Bush has always been described as a deeply private individual. Do you feel she reveals her inner self in this memoir? Do you feel you know who she is, more so than when you started the book? Or do you feel she revealed very little, especially after her childhood?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
Mike Leonard, 2006
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345481498
Summary
The Ride of Our Lives is the humorous yet deeply moving account of NBC journalist Mike Leonard’s cross-country odyssey with his eccentric parents, three grown children, and a daughter-in-law.
Full of ups and downs, laughs and tears, the month-long journey becomes a much larger tale of hope, persistence, and valuable lessons learned along the way.
A celebration of the ties between parents and children, as well as the unforgettable community of people one can meet across America, The Ride of Our Lives is an inspiring narrative of self-discovery and self-fulfillment–and how one unique family found blessings and simple pleasures on the road called lifets. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1947
• Where—Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• Raised—suburb, north of Chicago, Illinois
• Education—Providence College
• Currently—lives in Winnetka, Illinois, USA
Michael "Mike" Leonard is an American television journalist presently working for The Today Show on NBC. Leonard has been a feature correspondent for on the show for 28 years, and is known for his stories on everyday life and the unique, creative way he presents his work.
Leonard is also part of a family video production company, Picture Show Films. The company uses digital video exclusively and edits its projects on PowerBooks. Picture Show has produced critically-acclaimed television shows, features for PBS, ESPN, and other news outlets, and videos for fund-raising, corporate training, and other projects. Picture Show is also credited for producing The Brendan Leonard Show, hosted by his son Brendan Leonard.
In 1989, Leonard had the honor of having a G.I. Joe figure sculpted after his likeness by Hasbro. They named their character, Scoop, whose given name was "Leonard Michaels," in honor of the real newsman. Scoop was also in the communications field, just like his inspiration.
In 2006, Leonard published The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family, about a month-long road trip he took with his parents and grown children in an RV. Leonard has four grown children, Matt, Megan, Kerry, and Brendan, and three grandchildren, and currently resides in Winnetka, Illinois with his wife, Cathy. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Heartfelt and whimsical...a cross-country trek through life’s lessons.... Mike Leonard is a storyteller at heart, and each anecdote...punctuates the family’s love, struggles, and triumphs. In short, this is one ride worth taking.
Rocky Mountain News
Fans of NBC News correspondent Leonard's slice-of-life features for the Today show may enjoy this account of a month-long road trip he took with his parents, now in their 80s. But what works on screen doesn't translate to the printed page, and Leonard's attempt to merge a tribute to his parents with greater issues of life and death hits a dead end. As he drives from Chicago through the Southwest, up the East Coast and back to Chicago, Leonard intertwines his reflections with biographical stories by and about his somewhat eccentric parents. Their tales offer the book's most entertaining moments: phlegmatic Jack, who's "conversational `off' button got jammed," likes to sing old songs, while gregarious Marge likes to drink and repeatedly spices her conversation with profanity ("Toora loora, my ass!" she yells during one of Jack's songs). Although Marge's behavior begins to seem more unnerving than unusual, Leonard's account of her brave childhood with an abusive father is the book's highlight. But Leonard keeps putting himself at the center of the story, detailing how charmed his life has been from his college prep high school days to lucking into his TV career, which makes for dull reading.
Publishers Weekly
Take a road trip, combine it with the dynamics of three generations of a family living in close quarters, and the results can be worth sharing. Leonard, NBC's Today Show correspondent, leads the adventure by taking his retired parents and three adult children on a month-long trip from Phoenix to Chicago to be present for the birth of his first grandchild. Along the way, this extended family stops at places like the Alamo and Leonard's parents' alma maters and visits acquaintances from Leonard's previous reporting. Each stop offers further insight into this quirky family and sparks humorous and touching reminiscences of family history. Whether recounting his happy childhood or unearthing new discoveries about his parents' lives, Leonard delivers his engaging account with the same offbeat storytelling style that is the hallmark of his television reporting. His is a story of taking the time to learn about your family and appreciating the sometimes odd people you find in its ranks. —Sheila Kasperek, Mansfield Univ. Lib., PA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Ride of Our Lives:
1. What motivates Leonard to organize this road trip with his parents and children across the U.S? Would you have dared to attempt this with your own family?
2. In literature, as far back as The Odyssey, books about journeys represent a journey of self-discovery. Even though Leonard's trip is a real cross-country road-trip, in what way does he present it as the classic fictional "journey"? Who learns what...about whom?
3. How would you enjoy traveling with Leonard's parents? Talk about Jack and Marge—as characters, as well as parents and grandparents. How do you explain their affection for one another when they seem so incompatible as a married couple?
4. Where are the fault-lines in this family? Where do they fall—between Leonard and his parents...or Leonard and his kids? What is the nature of—and reason for—so-called "generational gaps"? Why do they occur in almost every family, most likely even your own? Speculate on why grandparents and grandchildren seem to get along so well.
5. What does Leonard learn about his parents—for instance, his mother's alcoholic father...his father's childhood trip to Ireland?
6. What were Mike Leonard's own struggles as a child? How did he overcome them? Would it have been different (easier... harder) in today's world? How did his experiences shape his life as a broadcast journalist?
7. Pick out the passages you found particularly funny...and talk about them. Also, those passages that your found most poignant—perhaps Jack and Marge's visit to their college campuses...or their old neighborhood in New Jersey.
8. What was most appealing to you about the places that the Leonard family visited—perhaps the B&B in the Bayou country where the sign says" Pick a room. Take a key. We'll see you for breakfast"? Any others? How did you feel about the diversity and quirkiness of the U.S. after reading this book? Make you want to take a road-trip?
9. Care to make comparisons between the Leonard family and your own?
10. What does this work suggest, if anything, about growing old in the 21st century?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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