We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.
James McbrideRead
When my mother left home, her family sat shivah for her, more because my father was not Jewish than because he was black.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the complexities of family dynamics and cultural identity in the context of loss.
James McBride's quote highlights the intersection of race and religion within family relationships. It captures the emotional weight of a mother leaving her family and the subsequent ritual of mourning that was influenced more by her husband's non-Jewish background than by her own racial identity. This quote reveals how personal and cultural identities shape familial bonds and the reactions to loss.
In practice
In a speech about family connections at a cultural diversity event.
We would not have been a successful family without my father and stepfather, who were working-class men with better dreams for their children. We just wore them out.
Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.
I felt like a Tinker toy 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.
Sometimes it seemed like the truth was a bandy-legged soul who dashed from one side of the world to the other and I could never find him.
I'm trying to get Americans to see that we're all pretty much the same. I believe it; I was taught God doesn't have a color. I want to better the planet a little bit.
It would be nice if we redefined what we meant by 'war story.' If you're making $15,000 a year living in a certain area of Portland, trying to make it with three kids and no husband, that's a kind of war.
Kids need a happy household. They need to be loved and supported in their dreams. And I don't think you can make your kids' dreams your own. They need you to support them in their dreams.
There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable.
Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.
Everybody's social life in Jordan revolves around family.
My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she'd seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country - all around the world - who show that type of fortitude.
My sense of injustice about our family's 'weirdness' in not owning a car was amplified by the fact that we did not own a television, either - my parents were unapologetic about this and told me very cheerfully that I would thank them for it when I was older, which was quite true.
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