preview

How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston Essay

Decent Essays
How it Feels to be Colored Me In “How it feels to be colored me” Zora Neale Hurston begins recanting her life in Eatonville, Florida. This little town was a black community and the only white people who ventured in to Eatonville were tourist either coming from or heading to Orlando which was just south of Zora’s home town, Eatonville. The town never gave much attention to the southerners never stopping from chewing sugar cane as they pasted but the Northerners who came through were a different breed. In Eatonville the timid would peer behind curtains, those more venturesome would come on to the porch and watch them past with equal amount of pleasure as the tourist got from surveying the village. Young Hurston was more venturesome then most…show more content…
When she was thirteen and left Eatonville and arrived in Jacksonville, Florida with her family for school she was no longer Zora of Orange County she was now a little colored girl. Although she was taken aback by this realization of the nation she lived in she says “There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul nor lurking behind my eyes.” …. “The world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less.” This young girl understands her placement in history that her ancestors have braved that battle that has made her into an American out of a potential slave, “ON the line” (on your marks). The children’s of those slaves who began the movement began the reconstruction of the nation’s legislation saying to their children “Get SET!” with the generation prior to Zora’s bellowing out “GO!” she acknowledges her “flying start must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.” Zora is taking what has been given to her and running with taking new meaning to creating a better life in America. She’s describes the position of the white man as being much more difficult. Describing her responds to jazz music in relation to that of a Whiteman who didn’t feel what she felt and heard but the white man only heard it. Giving the remark “Good music they have hear” while drumming the table. This is reference the trials and tribulation the African people of America have gone through in comparison. If your skin pigmentation was of a
Get Access