The Color of Love

A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl

By: Marra B. Gad

Narrated by: Marra B. Gad

Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2020 Midwest Book Award in Autobiography/Memoir, The Color of Love is an unforgettable memoir about a mixed-race Jewish woman who, after 15 years of estrangement from her racist great-aunt, helps bring her home when Alzheimer’s strikes

In 1970, three-day-old Marra B. Gad was adopted by a White Jewish family in Chicago. For her parents, it was love at first sight - but they quickly realized the world wasn’t ready for a family like theirs.

Marra’s biological mother was unwed, White, and Jewish, and her biological father was Black. While still a child, Marra came to realize that she was “a mixed-race, Jewish unicorn”. In Black spaces, she was not “Black enough” or told that it was okay to be Christian or Muslim but not Jewish. In Jewish spaces, she was mistaken for the help, asked to leave, or worse. Even in her own extended family, racism bubbled to the surface.

Marra’s family cut out those relatives who could not tolerate the color of her skin - including her once beloved, glamorous, worldly Great-Aunt Nette. After they had been estranged for 15 years, Marra discovers that Nette has Alzheimer’s and that only she is in a position to get Nette back to the only family she has left. Instead of revenge, Marra chooses love and watches as the disease erases her aunt’s racism, making space for a relationship that was never possible before.

The Color of Love explores the idea of yerusha, which means “inheritance” in Yiddish. At turns heart-wrenching and heartwarming, this is a story about what you inherit from your family - identity, disease, melanin, hate, and, most powerful of all, love. With honesty, insight, and warmth, Marra B. Gad has written an inspirational, moving chronicle proving that, when all else is stripped away, love is where we return and love is always our greatest inheritance.

©2019 Marra B. Gad (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing

An American Tragedy

So sad that people have to endure this horrible bigotry. Thank you to author for sharing your story with such grace and love. Anyone who reads it will benefit. It should be required that all teachers read this story to their class by first grade so children can teach those parents who still harbor hatred that all are created equal in this country.

enlightening and moving

The author is the best narrator I have ever encountered. I cried and laughed as her remarkable story unfolded.

profound, powerful

love it so much. thanks very much to marra, for her excellent words and voice

Beautiful, honest , heartfelt

From beginning to end, a wonderful story. Beautifully written. Full of raw honesty, humor and wit.
I was captivated by the whole story. It took me on a inside journey throughout the life of the writer. I felt every emotion possible.
Very well written and narrated. I was truly impressed. Thank you for sharing your story.

Fantastic read

A well written amazing story,. A must read.
I really enjoyed listening to this book. What an amazing lady.

A story of resilience and love. Timely lessons.

Marra B. Gad boldly shares intimate aspects of growing up an adopted mixed race girl, in a white Jewish family. She offers insight into this experience that few have the pleasure of experiencing. I am grateful for Gad’s honest telling and the details of learning about one’s own capacity for love, in spite of it all. And I mean it ALL. Bravo. Aching and Inspirational. Love promoting, life and death affirming. Thank you. Todah Rabah. Happy Rosh Hashanah 2020❤️

The color of love

What an incredible story! I wish I could meet and talk to Ms. Gad. Tomorrow a group of us from my synagogue will be gathered to discuss the book. I look forward to all of us sharing our thoughts.

Why can't we all just get along?

So glad Marra took the time and patience to write her story. Although she suffered so much verbal abuse from unexpected places, I am so glad she acknowledges the love, protection and sacrifices her parents made.

I believe that we are all mixed race but when you look 'White' people don't see any signs or traits of that great-great-great grandmother who was Black. My husband told me once when it comes to Black and White people, and he can be very wise at times, if you're not all White, you're Black. Marra was conceived by a Jewish woman with a Black man and was born a beautiful baby with caramel skin. She grew up to become the pride and joy to her family who loved her very much. Unfortunately, it's the aunts, grandmothers, cousins, friends, other Jews and Blacks who resent her mixed origins.

Marra narrates her book, and I can hear the pain in retelling her very personal stories of rejection and betrayal. Although, in my opinion, the worse abuse was from her grand aunt, the biggest disappointment originated with her male friend who told her why she would never date or marry a Jewish man. Jewish men appreciated her exotic beauty and would only want to bed her but could never take her to meet their family. Another disappointment was when Marra was 10 years old and a poet who was a member of the Jewish community wrote a book of love poems dedicated to her. It would have been cute except all the poems were about her exotic beauty and taking her virginity!

If it wasn't for the love and loyalty of her family, she would have grown up to be a bitter woman who hates the world. I commend Marra for her show of compassion to that horrible great aunt who manipulated ways to demean and ignore Marra throughout her entire life.

This is a good book, excellently narrated, that provides a perspective of life that as a brown skin woman, I never thought about. The book ends with Marra still single. I know her happy ever after husband is out there somewhere. She will know him when she sees him because he will remind her of her father. God Bless.

Congratulations

Raw, fresh, vulnerable, Courageous, beautifully written, eye-opening, sensitive, a worthwhile book, time well spent

I felt this true story stayed with me, still has

We don't pick our parents.
Our lives are altered by so many factors,
The story being true, and someone in my acquaintance knowing the Author from childhood made this somewhat personal.
We have no idea what is painful to some, none what so ever,
We also have no real idea what joy impacts someone.
To hear the story was what I needed for me.
I became a better person from it.