text: This was an astounding book about an even more astounding woman, Rachel Shilsky, a.k.a Ruth McBride Jordan.  Written by one of her 12 children, James, this book is both biography (mother) and autobiography (child).  A Polish Jew (white) who fled her oppressive surroundings in backwater Virginia, Ruth met and married two different black men and managed to raise 12 children in some extremely difficult circumstances in Harlem, New York.  Not only did she start a Baptist Church with her husband, she coped with a regular dose of racism, some significant poverty and still managed to send 12 children to school (all of whom became professionals, and productive citizens).
  
  The book is written by the son, but the voice of the mother is registered throughout (in italic print).  She evades all queries about her background, her family, in fact any of her history, and it is not until much later that the son uncovers her history (abusive father, crippled mother) and the reader is even more impressed with the fortitude and will that it must have taken this woman to make her own life in a community that was not of her economic, racial, or religious experience.
  
  Although the book is ostensibly about this man's childhood and his remarkable mother, it is also a fascinating glimpse of racism, religion and social exclusion in the black communities in New York in the 1960s. Each of Ruth's children experienced a certain unease about their racially `different' mother and yet each became aware of who they were and what they were about.
  
  This book is just a marvelous read.  Full of funny and sad tales of a rather unique family life, McBride's work is a tribute to his extraordinary mother. 
  