How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Neale Hurston

During a time where African American literature was fueled with racial segregation and pride in ones race during the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston offers a different and controversial approach with her literary work “How it feels to be colored me”.(13) In the works Hurston uses several colloquialisms, anecdotes, imagery and figurative expression to invite the reader on an adventure filled with pleasure. The poem takes the reader from the beginning of the Hurston’s childhood back in Eatonville, Florida into adulthood in Orlando, Florida. Hurston proves that overcoming racism can be accomplished by uniting the public and ignoring the visual difference in a person’s outer appearance. Hurston’s strength, individuality and resilience scream

Her descriptions of people’s content being the same through images of junk in old bags allows her to drive home the point that people aren’t all the different, no matter the appearance. The small detail of Hurston claiming she has no race allows her to plunge into the powerful bag metaphor, effectively portraying her conception of race. Hurston’s simple details followed by powerful yet perceptible images powerfully portray her thoughts and points on racial conflict.

The Scramble for Africa can easily be defined as the forced invasion and division of African countries among European superpowers. Those powers included Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Each superpower wanted control over a certain area on the continent and would do anything to ensure that their area remained in their best interest. To bring the conflicts to the forefront, the countries participated in the Berlin Africa Conference in 1884-1885. In this conference, the issues of Anglo-German relations and everybody’s control in Africa were discussed. As a result of the conference, European control began to overtake the African continent and imperialism became a giant part of the European mark. In his book, “Worlds of Color” W.E.B DuBois discusses the idea of whole colonial enterprise stating that the problem the world faces is the color line. This can easily be interpreted as Dr. DuBois giving the idea that if World, more specifically European superpowers stop viewing the color line and Africa’s color line as something less than them a lot of the world’s issues could be detected and fixed. But more importantly, Dr. DuBois is stating that without the Worlds of Color, European industrialization would not exist.

Paragraph: Published in during the 1900s, at a time when being colored was considered unbeneficial, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” depicts Hurston’s audacious (for the time) pride in being an African-American woman. In order to emphasize her thesis, she employs pathos and figurative

In Hughes poem “Note on the commercial Theatre” he started off with an angry tone, upset that African American music was used by the whites, but the African Americans didn’t receive the credit for the artistic work: “You’ve taken my blues and gone you sing them on Broadway” (1043). Furthermore, at the end of the poem Hughes does expresses a powerful ending, our culture is beautiful, but you will never be me: “Black and beautiful and sing about me, and put on plays about me! I reckon it’ll be me myself” (1043)! Hughes poems focused on the urban cultures, while Zora Neale Hurston short story “How it feels to be Colored Me” focused on her as a woman who is discovering herself and her worth.

Hurston, on the other hand, lived in a town where only blacks lived until she was thirteen years old. Therefore, she only knew the “black” self. There was no second identity to contend with. She states that “white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.”2 She does not feel anger when she is discriminated against. She only wonders how anyone can not want to be in her company. She “has no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston 1712).

In Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, her racial identity varies based on her location. Towards the beginning of her life when Zora was in her own community she could be a lighthearted, carefree spirit. However, when she was forced to leave her community, Zora’s identity became linked to her race. In this essay I will demonstrate how Zora’s blackness is both a sanctuary and completely worthless.

The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.

Racial bias and discrimination have historically constricted African Americans from living free and prosperous lives. Especially, in America’s Progressive Era when “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” happened to be published. This groundbreaking essay, written by Zora Neale Hurston, provided African Americans with a unique approach to defying racial discrimination. Namely, Hurston’s unique defense from societal discrimination is in her steadfast optimism towards the limitations of being African American. Therefore, Hurston’s essay achieved more than bringing hope to African Americans it also provided a solution in this period of bitter adversity. This is what distinguishes Nora’s essay from other literary works because it focuses on modeling a beneficial mindset rather than listing the hardships that black people are subjected to. Zora Neale Hurston is an influential role model for African Americans, she argues that racial discrimination and unjust biases can be overcome by having pride and optimism in the progression of one’s race.

Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, characters face many acts of racial discrimination growing up while living in the South during the 1930’s. In the novel Hurston shows how a racial caste system is formed. As the story progresses, the reader is able to see how the caste system affects different characters in different ways. This shows that even if people do not experience oppression in the same way as another, it doesn’t mean that they don’t bare the same weight, but might react to the weight differently.

The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset,

Even though both Hurston and Hughes grew up around the same time period, they had very different ideals regarding their experience as African American’s as well as a different voice used within their works to convey their ideals. Hurston in her 1928 essay “How it Feels to be Colored Me” describes her childhood and coming of age with a delightful zest that cannot be contained. Although the essay does contain some dark moments such as when she describes her experience with her friend at the jazz club and the sudden realization of the racial difference between her and the other patrons, for the most part the work exudes her keen sense of dignity despite the popular opinion of the masses during that period. Lines in her essay such as “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes…I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it” (Abcarian, Klotz, and Cohen 812) beautifully express her sense of self dignity and refusal to give in to the negative energies surrounding her race. Despite the many hardships that the color of her skin caused her she was proud and determined to never let that stand in her way of

One of Hurston’s stories, How it Feels to Be Colored Me, reflects the author’s perspective of the colored race (specifically herself). According to the story, when Hurston reached the age of thirteen, she truly “became colored” (1040). The protagonist was raised in Eatonville, Florida, which was mainly inhabited by the colored race. She noted no difference between herself and the white community except that they never lived in her hometown. Nevertheless, upon leaving Eatonville, the protagonist began losing her identity as “Zora,” instead, she was recognized as only being “a little colored girl” (1041). Hurston’s nickname “Zora” represents her individuality and significance; whereas, the name “a little colored girl” was created by a white society to belittle her race and gender (1041).

At time she states she feels that she simple doesn’t have a race and is merely herself. “I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston, vol. 2, pp. 360). At the end of the short story she uses a metaphor: “I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of

The memorization of the facts and dates of events has proven to be the hardest part of learning history for me. The interdisciplinary nature of this course is what has helped me understand the material and be able to follow the “story” of history. Reading the words and perspective of important figures that live in the periods of American history that we are studying allowed me to see America through their eyes and allowed me to make sense of the prevailing feelings and ideas of the time. Reading works from writers of diverse viewpoints, gave me the opportunity to learn about an era from many different perspectives from the people who lived it. In particular, Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to be Colored Me’ offered a very different tone in the gloomy times of segregation. What I enjoyed about Hurston’s writing is that her distinct voice allowed me to hear her confidence and hope. Though the facts and dates will always be crucial to studying history, writing like Hurston’s can teach so much more about a time period than an Oakes