How It Feels To Be Colored Me, By Zora Neale Hurston

Jacksonville is where she where Hurston “was now a little colored girl.”(14) The pain that discrimination can cause did not affect Hurston her self-pride and individuality did not allow racial difference to effect her negatively. Hurston writes “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood”. (14) Hurston describes how someone is always reminding her of the past transgressions of the White people. Her response is simply that the past is in the past and we must live in the present. Hurston does describe moments when she feels racial difference and her experiences with it. There are time where being amount thousands of white people the author is “a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.”(14) Additionally there are the times where the author is among just one white person in a sea of black people as she describes in her different experience with a friend at a Jazz Club. With all of these situations of difference the author describes not changing and remaining the same. The author explains pride in oneself multiple times throughout the essay stating “I am the eternal feminine” (14) and “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my

The constant relocation prompted Zora to go to work. Most of the jobs Hurston landed as maids and waitresses didn’t last long, due to her independent attitude. Hurston spent the next five years wandering from one job to another, living from hand to mouth, never able to afford new clothes or, even worse, books. Hurston, finally found a break when she became a wardrobe girl in the Gilbert and Sullivan theatrical troop. For eighteen months, she traveled with them feeling like a part of their family. With the assistance of one of the actresses, Zora entered Morgan Academy in Baltimore, MD (The high school division of what is now Morgan State University) in the fall of 1917(Howard 5).

Audience- Hurston’s intended audience was a wide range of readers: “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” was aimed at both the white and black community.

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).

Zora could not understand why the dynamic in her community changed when white people rode through her town. In Eatonville, she often would disobey her elders by waving and greeting as white visitors rode through her town. She says herself that “During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there” (Hurston 42). She grew up black among black people, and because of her sheltered childhood she remained ignorant to the idea that blacks were subjected to poorer treatment than whites just because they were black. So as she grew up, she lived with a carefree spirit that stayed with her throughout her adolescence. Zora couldn’t wrap her head around why when white people came

Hurston stays who she is, no matter what people might think of her. In her non-fiction text she especially manages to convey this by using Humor, that creates Ethos within the text. The first words of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” include “I am the only Negro in the Unites States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief”, in which Hurston makes fun of all the Afro-Americans at the time who were trying to claim Native American heritage. This start into the text creates a lighthearted atmosphere, in which the author acknowledges her less than perfect living circumstances, but showing that she will not crumple beneath them. Before being sent to a racially mixed boarding school in Jacksonville, Zora Hurston lived in a town in Florida. She always welcomed white tourists looking at their town and states that she was “the first welcome-to-our state Floridian”, hoping “the Miami Chamber of Commerce will please take notice”. Of course, at the time, it was impossible to involve the government in a personal wit, so the author uses the sarcastic information to show the reader that she would live her life no matter what the social norms might have been in the 1920s. In the second half of her text, Hurston includes the Irony “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me”, showing that she knows that some people would view her as being socially unacceptable, however Hurston does not care, as long as she can stay true to her own character. Through the humorous tone created, the reader acknowledges that Hurston is light hearted and sympathizes with her

In the early stages of Zora 's life, which are expressed in the beginning of "How it Feels to be Colored Me," black and whites had little difference in her eyes. She didn 't even seems to differentiate between the two until her early teens. She says, "I remember the very day I became colored."

In the beginning of Zora’s story, she stated a strong quote that solidified her black identity. She said, “I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief” (Hurston, 1928). She goes on to mention that the only encounters that she had from “native whites” were the ones passing through the town of Eatonville, Florida that she would wave to. Zora saw no color. Her comfort zone was in that small town. She was known as

Zora Neale Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black town in the United States to be incorporated and self-governed. Due to Hurston growing up in an all-black community, she was protected from racism. She states that the only white people she knew were the ones passing through the town going to or coming from Orlando. When she moved from the town of Eatonville to Jacksonville, she was introduced to a different lifestyle where she was

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).

The topic of racism is a very intriguing one for me. Other authors criticized Zora Neal Hurtson that she, being a black woman during the black liberation movement in the 1910’s, should be writing about black people being set free and how they are being suppressed by the world around them. Instead, Zora mainly deals with the issues of the women being suppressed and not allowed to be free. This idea itself mirrors that of freeing black people, but yet authors of the time were not able to see that, they called her book artificial and did not help them in their quest for freedom.

Once her mother passed, she was “passed about like a bad penny.” Her father treated her like he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Her father told her that she’d be hung for sure, since she was filled with passion and imagination. She felt as though once her daddy remarried the bond that they had been broken. Zora and her step mother Mattie Moge never got along with each other. They always exchange words and sometimes it would get intense to the point of them fighting. A few years later poor Zora would get tired of what she was going through. Zora worked her way up to the top, and later enrolled in school with a false birth date. Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist

2, pp. 358). When people reminded her that she is the granddaughter of slaves, it doesn’t sadden her. She acknowledges that slavery is a part of the past and “slavery is the price I paid for civilization” (Hurston, vol. 2, pp. 359). Zora now saw herself differently amongst a sea of white peoples; prior to now she was unaware of any differences. However, even feeling colored she finds herself; the negative doesn’t define her. She doesn’t see the difference she just sees the contrast of color. She notices a contract while at a jazz club with a white male nearby. She becomes consumed by the music from the band and in her head she is in the South African jungle doing a deer dance hunting for prey. The orchestra finishes the song and the white male sitting near only acknowledges it was good music. The song hadn’t touched him like it had her. He only heard the song that she could feel in her bones and that is when she notices the contrast between them. “He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored” (Hurston, vol.2, pp. 359).

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

Despite the fact of being an African American during the early 1900s, Zora Neale was a very successful writer, currently being one of the most recognized writers out there. She was born in Alabama but moved to a Negro town in Florida when still a toddler. Hurston’s life was filled with happiness and innocence until she was sent off to school in Jacksonville following her mother’s death at age thirteen, where she confronted her first taste of segregation. Coming from slave grandparents, she experienced racism, although claims it never depressed her. After struggling with being a student and working at the same time she disappeared from public records for a decade and then reappeared in 1917 still lacking a High School Diploma.