How It Feels To Be Colored Me Essay

In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston reveals that despite the existence of racism and discrimination, she does not “belong to no race nor time” (Hurston 3) because she has pride in being herself, regardless of her color. Hurston recalls several memories from her childhood, where she “lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida” (1) up until her thirteenth birthday. Even at this young age, Hurston mentions that the only difference she saw between whites and blacks was that whites “rode through town and never lived here” (1). Unfortunately, when she turned thirteen, she was “sent to school in Jacksonville” (1) and when she “disembarked from the river-boat” she was “now a little colored girl” (1). Even though Hurston was growing up with a change of identity in a new town, she refused to let that slow her down or cause her to “weep at the world” (2). Moreover, the only time where she thought of herself or felt colored is when she gets “thrown against a sharp white background” (2). In other words, the concept of color defining a person only existed when she was compared to or set apart from whites. Hurston goes on to describe that regardless of any discrimination,
For example, Hurston brings up the idea that when seeing a little black girl, people immediately draw a connection to slavery. Hurston writes that “someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past” (2). Hurston is so intent on not letting the past shape her present or future because she is “off to a flying start” and is in no place to “to look behind and weep” (2). Simply, Hurston is showing how even though this repeatedly occurs to her, she does not give it a second thought because she is determined to stay true to herself and what she believes