Ruth had a miserable life growing up. Her family was Jewish Orthodox, and first generation Americans. She spent most of her childhood moving around with her family as her father looked for work as a rabbi. Her family finally settled in Suffolk, Virginia. It was a small town which was racially segregated and Jews were not well liked there. They lived on the black side of town and her father was t

Even when Ruth’s mother died the family would not see her. After Ruth\'s mother died she was devastated and could hardly do anything. She was depressed for months but Dennis stuck by her and tried to tell her it wasn\'t her fault and that the lord forgave her. That\'s when she started going to Metropolitan Church in Harlem. She started to believe that the Lord would forgive her for leaving her mother. “ I started to become a Christian and the jew in me began to die. The Jew in me was dying anyway, but it truly died when my mother died.” (McBride, 218) She became a devout Christian and never turned away from her faith throughout her life. She was as dedicated to the Christian faith as her family was to the Jewish faith. “There was no turning back after my mother died. I stayed on the black side because that was the only place i could stay.” (McBride, 232)

She fell in love with a black man named Dennis who worked for her Aunt. “The first thing I liked about him, in fact what i like about most black folks all my life: They never judged me.” (McBride,109) Dennis, like most blacks she met, accepted her and she was finally loved by someone other than her mother. In her fathers eyes this was the worst possible person she could fall in love with. When she went home a few months after moving to New York to see her sick mother, her father told her, “If you marry a nigger, don\'t ever come home again. Don\'t come back.” (McBride, 215) She did marry Dennis and from then on she was considered dead to her family. They sat shiva, a Jewish ceremony to mourn their dead, and washed their hands of Ruth for good.

He attained and quit many journalist positions and different newspapers and magazines. James was a talented journalist but, he couldn\'t stay at one job for long because that voice inside kept telling him to go play the sax, write a book, or compose music. He needed to find a way to express himself, but he didn\'t really know who he was to begin with. When he quit his job at the Washington Post he did so because, “I got tired of running, and that little ache I had known as a boy was no longer a little ache when I reached thirty. I had to find out more about who I was, and in order to find out who I was, I had to find out who my mother was.” (McBride, 266) He decided to write this book to express who he is and find out who his mother, whom he loved all his life, really was. When he went to Suffolk to see where his mother lived he could feel the loneliness, and heartbreak that his mothers family felt. Talking to the people who still lived their and remembered their family told him that it wasn\'t an easy place for Jews to live and they weren’t surprised Ruth left.

Ruth\'s family life was not much better than her social life. Her father was very strict and she was afraid of him. “There were to many rules to follow, too many forbiddens and ‘you cant’s and ‘you musnt’s,’ but does anybody say they love you?” (McBride, 8) She never felt like her father loved he,r or her brothers or sisters. She knew

Some topics in this essay:
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