Mentors

When James realized he didn’t know about his mother backround he was devastated. This is mainly because her past is in someways his own past. “I // had // to find out who I was, and in order to find out who I was, I had to find out who my mother was.”(266) Ruth instilled in James a love for God and the importance of education. “Put God first…”(9) While she gave him the means for being racially confused, she helped him through it. By dodging questions about his ethnicity, she helped him to understand that race doesn’t matter. Just as God is the color of water, she taught him that he should not associate a person’s race with a person’s being. “Black males are closely associated with crime in America, not with white Jewish mothers, and I could not imagine a police officer buying my story as I stood in front of the Jewish temple saying, ‘Uh, yeah, my grandfather was the rabbi here, you know…’”(220) She also taught James to be a strong person. “She always cried when they left, though never in front of us.”(190) James’ mother taught him to look to God for help. “I found it odd and amazing when white people treated me that way, as if there were no barriers between us. It said a lot about this religion-Judaism-that some of its followers…seemed to believe that its covenants went beyond he color of ones skin.”(224)

Chicken Man was the “chief philosopher of the corner.” He would comment on “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”(146) He taught James that nobody would care about him unless he educated himself. Chicken Man had a lasting effect on James. “what he said didn’t really hit me, not right away.”(150) “Deep inside I knew that my old friend Chicken Man back in Louisville was right.”(161)