Summary Of Flight Patterns 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

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 Neale Hurston is unequivocally open about her race and identity in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” As Hurston shares her life story, the reader is exposed to Hurston’s self-realization journey about how she “became colored.” Hurston utilizes her autobiographical short story as a vehicle to describe the “very day she became colored.” Race is particularly vital in Zora Neale Hurston’s essay, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” as she deals with the social construct of race, racism, and sustaining one’s cultural identity.

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.

Occasionally, once in a great while, a unique person comes along. Zora Neale Hurston was one of those bigger than life people. She would have told you so herself. She was just as she should have been. She was, "Zora."

The more important in Zora Hurston's view is her personal identity. “At certain times I have no race, I am me." (14)

Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and

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).

Racism is something that is surrounding William yet he frowns upon it. This is very contradictory because, although he is so quick to clarify that he is Native American brown, not dangerous brown. William is self conscious about himself and does not want his color to define him, yet at the same time he claims he takes pride is his color. In “flight patterns” the story is told in the narrator’s point of view. This is important

In her 2013 novel Allegiant, author Veronica Roth stated, “I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me – they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could” (Roth). In other words, relationships are what humans derive strength and experience from, which they use to build and develop their own identity. This universal idea of discovering one’s identity can be seen in literature from all ages, from Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, to Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston

He is a fearful man. William overachieves in mostly anything he does, especially work. He is an athletic person who is strongly concerned with his health or lack of, depending on how much sleep he gets. He is an insomniac, works odd hours sometimes and constantly finds himself flying all over for business trips and meetings. He, therefore, doesn’t see his wife and child. He tends to over analyzes everything. Which makes it harder not to prejudge people like going to the airport where he always scans for little brown guys. William has been a victim of racial profiling. The irony of the story is when he searches for these ‘little brown guys’, is “William himself was a little brown guy, so the other travelers were always sniffing around him, but he smelled only of Dove soap, Mennen deodorant, and sarcasm” (par.34). William does a lot to hide his Native American culture, becoming a white washed Native American. He is stuck in the stereotype and discrimination based on the color of his skin, but he upholds the same lifestyle and thinking of a middle-class white

After reading "Flight Patterns", I would agree that William is intelligent. While he may have some preconceived generalizations about certain groups of people; however, he is constantly contradicting his own thoughts, which to me, shows how open-minded he is. I also found it interesting that William finds pleasure in the discomfort of seeing people stereotype others. He has lived in neighborhoods where he feels uncomfortable because he and his family are the minority in the neighborhood, so he had no problem seeing other people feel how he

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the greatest authors in the Harlem Renaissance era, and it saddened me to discover that she died before seizing the benefits of her literary work of arts. Ms. Hurston was often criticized for her substantial use of southern country dialect and folk dialogue; she was a master at creating realistic African-American works of fiction. Hurston’s style of narrative is divided into direct and indirect dialogue. In her writing, she would employ a third-person narrative voice that was vastly intelligent with scholarly techniques such as formal grammar, rich vocabulary, vivid imagery, and allegories to define her settings, locations, and portrayals. Contrariwise, in the same piece, she would display a narrative voice in first-person and third-person using slang language, informal grammar, and irregular speech patterns. Through Hurston’s fictitious creations it enables us to appreciate how significant linguistic choices are used to enrich the production of contemporary literature and how different dualistic styles of narrative can work together in depicting the narration within that story.

During the slavery period a number of African slaves wrote stories, and poems about their daily hardships that they had to withhold by being a slave and everything else that happen throughout their life’s. Not many Black writers had the resources or support from their owners to publish what they wrote or anyone to care about what they wrote, lucky slaves did reach success when they published their work. Knowing where they came from or where they grew up from is important, the type of work that each individual accomplished when they published their work to the public. The massive impact that Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln had in the black community and how they helped change the way they were being treated completely.