75 pages 2 hours read

James McBride

The Color of Water

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1996

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Before Reading

Reading Context

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The Black Panther Party was a Marxist-Leninist organization founded by a couple of college students in 1966. What were the primary beliefs of the Black Panther Party? What historical events led to its creation, and how did it connect to the larger Black Power movement of the 1960s?

Teaching Suggestion: James’s sense of racial dissonance stems from his diverse racial heritage, with a white Jewish mother and Black father. In the 1960s, James is intrigued by the Black Power movement—but also scared of it. An understanding of this movement will allow students to better connect to one of the core themes of the book, which concerns the experience of Growing Up With a Diverse Racial Background in America.

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