How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Neale Hurston

In the essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, author Zora Neale Hurston writes to an American audience about having maturity and self-conscious identity while being an African American during the early 1900’s through the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance. Hurston expresses and informs her audience about how she does not see herself as a color, and instead sees herself as all she is made up of on the inside. Her primary claim is that she is not “tragically colored” and she should not have a single care about how the world reminds her of how she should act about her race. Her essay chronicles her personal experiences in being an unapologetically colored woman and creates the argument that she should not ever feel self-pity for being black. She utilizes her personal anecdotes and weaves them with metaphors, analogies, and rhetorical questions in order to create an immersive experience for the reader. Furthermore, Hurston engages the reader with her slightly sarcastic, strong, and blissfully positive tone effectively creates a way with words that communicate her claims in an entertaining way.

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.

In Zora Neale Hurtson's “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” we encounter a very broad descriptive essay where Hurston explores the new found discovery of her self-admiration. To complement the wide variety of description used throughout the essay, Hurston includes imagery and figurative language to capture the reader with a first class seat on a journey with her. At the beginning of the essay, Hurtson dives into her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, describing moments using anecdotes when she sang and danced throughout the streets and greeted the neighbors. Back then she was free from the scaring feeling of being different and was "everybody's Zora". But she immediately became different when she was thirteen and her mother passed away and she left home to attend boarding school in Jacksonville.

In "How it Feels to be Colored Me", Zora Neale Hurston describes her experience of growing up in the “little Negro town of Eatonville” (Hurston, 181) and moving to Jacksonville. Living in Eatonville came easy for Zora, this was because she fit in and it’s all she knew; however, it was not until she moved to Jacksonville did she become “a little colored girl” (Hurston, 182). Zora did not experience racial discrimination while in Eatonville, this was because everyone living there was black

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

The story “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston is a remarkable short story about her life as a younger girl in Eatonville, Florida. She did not know truly what her race was until she was thirteen years old because she lived in a town with a bunch of other black people. She rarely saw white people unless they were passing through. “The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando. (Hurston)”

Because of her background, Hurston was able to use her experiences and put them into novels. Being that she “ grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the first black incorporated town in America” (“Zora Neale Hurston” 1), Hurston did not sense discrimination in her early years; she felt as though there was no difference between white and black folks. In the serene town of Eatonville, “African Americans were not demoralized by the constant bombardment of poverty and racial hatred,” (“Zora Neale Hurston” 1) giving her the opportunity to grow up in a positive environment and become her own person; however, “the

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).

How It Feels to be Colored Me is an essay by Zora Neale Hurston published in the World Tomorrow on May 1928. In the essay she describes her first experience with racism. The purpose of the piece is to show self-confidents and pride in her identity. She shows the reader the positives of embracing your identity and not letting society affect your true selves. Stating “I’m not ashamed to be colored.” (pg.416), meaning that no matter what anyone saying about her being black, she still has pride in herself.

Zora Neale Hurston How It Feels to Be Colored Me is an autobiographical short story wrote in 1926. She takes us back to her childhood youth a time period when racism was prevalent. She

In “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, she tells a compelling story of staying true to her identity as she transitioned in childhood from no difference in color to becoming a colored girl while going against the stereotypes of black people. Zora starts off as a thirteen-year-old girl in her hometown Eatonville, Florida where there was no difference in color because it was made up of African Americans with white people just passing through. Zora was a very animated girl who stood out for her quirky characteristics like dancing in the streets. Even though the people in town loved her, Zora was sent away to Jacksonville, Florida due to family complications.

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.

At the beginning of the essay Hurston opens up with the statement that she is colored and that she offers no extenuating circumstances to the fact except that she is the only Negro in the U.S. whose grandfather was not an Indian chief. She presents a striking notion that she was not born colored, but that she later became colored during her life. Hurston then delves into her childhood in Eatonville, Florida an exclusively colored town where she did not realize her color then. Through anecdotes describing moments when she greeted neighbors, sang and danced in the streets, and viewed her surroundings from a comfortable spot on her porch, she just liked the white tourists going through the town. Back then, she was “everybody’s Zora” (p. 903), free from the alienating feeling of difference. However, when her mother passed away she had to leave home and

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

Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” can be interpreted as a reverse response of W. E. B. DuBois’ concept of “double consciousness” that he describes in “The Souls of Black Folk.” Hurston shows that not all African Americans experience a sense of double consciousness and that some are instilled with the self confidence required to embrace one’s “blackness.” First, it may be helpful to define consciousness before attempting to explain the notion of double consciousness. Consciousness is defined as the state of being mentally aware of something: oneself, in this essay. Therefore, we can now define double consciousness as the state of an individual being mentally aware of “two selves”: one as you see yourself and the second as