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

While skin color has be a subject of discriminations against people, How It Feels to be colored presents how Zora Hurston embrace the true meaning of the human being despite, race, color, religion or social status.

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.

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is written by Zora Hurston about her feeling toward her race. Before she got thirteen she didn't have much reason to feel her race is making discrimination for her but when she left home in thirteen years old for education in new school in Jacksonville ( there was no more all-black people) she felt more distance between races. While she was in Florida she was “ everybody’s Zoha” but when she moved she felt her color is making difference .

The Harlem Renaissance was a time period when African American culture came to fruition. Many musicians, artists, and literary authors published their work, and are still read to this day. Some of these works include Langston Hughes’ “Dreams” and Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”. While both these authors faced some of the same problems, they have different attitudes and outlooks toward life.

Imagine yourself being a person wearing colorful clothes in a room filled with people wearing all black. You obviously stand out. However, every time you try to make friends , people would turn away and at you funny. Feeling alienated or alone may come to mind. Thats a feeling many can relate to Discrimnation in America has been a problem for generations.To gain insight and to combat the issue, it is imporant to read narratives of people that have been though or felt oppressed .The connection between both of these autobiographical essays is how society made them quetion their identities.. By examining “How It feels to be to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”by Gloria Anzaldua , the reader can see how the author 's’ individuality makes them strive to figure out their identity in a new environment. Both of these authors retain their confidence and their culture in a new environment in different ways

“How it Feels to be Color Me” by Zora Neale is about her growing up and not knowing the negative aspects of being a person of color (Neale 1). Although she acknowledges the hardships her ancestors face and that she still faces today she realizes it should not hold her back and that she can be a powerful woman (Neale 2).

It has lived with us for a long time. It hides in our subconscious and human nature. There is no way to eliminated racism. Racism has exists throughout human history until now. Racism is hated someone that are not as good as the members of your own or the belief that someone is less human than another by discriminate their skin’s color,language, place of birth or even just a custom. According to Zora Neale Hurston work’s name Their eyes were watching god also mention about this social issue. Zora Neale Hurston is an African-American novelist who is the most accomplish woman in Harlem Renaissance. She were experience racism before so she try to present racism in her story. Even if Racism is not a central theme but it’s still important and widespread

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can one deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” In this quote by Zora Neale Hurston, she is stating that she is against hatred in a humorous way. The way it is structured, people look at this problem in different aspects. Zora was very much a part of the Harlem Renaissance which began in 1925 and ended in the 1950s. It was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion. It is described as an explosion because it was after World War I and everyone was just so eager to share their ideas. Hurston was in a time where women, especially colored women, had trouble with their identity but fortunately for them Hurston was someone they could look up to.

Growing up in Eatonville, Florida, Zora Neale Hurston led a sheltered life from the racism that was rampant in other parts of the country. The town of Eatonville is an important element of the early life that molded her because it was an all-black community. It was run by blacks and was the first all-black town incorporated in the United States (Campbell 1). She saw nothing but successful black people, not suppressed black people. Until she left the town when she was thirteen, she only knew of white people from the ones that were passing through on their way to or from Orlando (Hurston 13). The title of her autobiographical story, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, disguises that Hurston’s strength comes from her individuality and inner-self, not her ethnicity.

After reading the article “How it Feels to be Colored”, this reading gave me a better understanding of how discrimination still exist and why it is inarticulate. The main character Zora Hurston, first lived in Eatonville, Florida. She lost her mom at the age of 13, the moved to Jacksonville, Florida. She then enrolled into boarding school. Hurston immediately became identified as a “colored” person. She never cared about how people tried to make her feel or let it bother her.

Zora Neale Hurston grew up in a predominantly African American town and because of how she grew up, she did not experience the segregation and prejudice that other African Americans felt in their daily lives until she moved from her hometown at a much older age. Because her community was predominantly colored, she grew up embracing her ethnicity instead of learning she should feel ashamed of her ethnicity and the white people surrounding her had more worth. Hurston, shows in her works Their Eyes Were Watching God and “How it Feels to be Colored Me,” that she believes that pride in oneself comes before all else and fostering personal growth and relationships best helps in maintaining a state of self satisfaction.

transforms his own slave narrative into a novel about a phenotypically white slave woman. This adds great meaning to mixed race individuals throughout the text because a white female will ultimately be the symbol of liberty for slaves. For instance, Clotel is the daughter of Jefferson, and is still not able to be liberated from the inevitable fate that black slaves faced. She was sold into slavery, even though she resembled the white race more than the black race.

Zora Neal Hurston, an accomplished African American writer, philanthropist, scholar, and woman’s rights activist born January 7th 1891 and died in 1960. Zora is one of the founding mothers of literature in the African American renaissance. Zora’s writing is one of the most vivid writings’ of its time, her literary descriptions help the reader understand her perspective while giving the reader a “set stage” to envision each scene in the story. “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” dealt with a time period after slavery was abolished, but discrimination and segregation were still present in people’s minds. Through humor, anecdote and metaphor, Hurston addresses her personal experiences as a Negro in the 1900s.

Zora was born January 7, 1891, and was an American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist known for her contributions to African-American literature. Her career took off around the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston influenced many great writers such as Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bambara. According to Robert Hemenway’s The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, Hurston's purpose in writing was to ¨. Remind the Renaissance -- especially its more bourgeois members--of the richness of the racial heritage.¨ (zoranealehurston.com) As a young woman Zora did not see herself as black.. or rather as colored, she merely saw herself as Zora. In her essay ¨How It Feels To Be Colored Me¨ Zora describes how she was just herself until the day she moved to Jacksonville, Florida from Eatonville, Florida. ¨I remember the very day that I became colored¨ (How It Feels To Be Colored Me; paragraph 2) Hurston goes on to explain that Eatonville was an exclusively colored town