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How It Feels To Be Colored Me Analysis

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Day and Night
Long ago the world was split. If the chaos of history has taught us anything, it is that sides will always result in growing conflict. Marginalization due to racial prejudice have found ways into the life of all and can be an unwieldy to accept. Zora Neale Hurston, an American novelist, speaks freely about her life and upbringing as an African American woman in her well known essay, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” in which she shares her outlook on personal experiences of being treated by others and of treating herself. Brent Staples, an author and an editorial writer for the New York Times, discusses similar topics and shares detailed experiences with the struggle of stereotypical views on African Americans in his intriguing

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How It Feels to Be Colored Me Analysis

..."How it Feels to be Colored Me" was written in 1928. Zora, growing up in an all-black town, began to take note of the differences between blacks and whites at about the age of thirteen. The only white people she was exposed to were those passing through her town of Eatonville, Florida, many times going to or coming from Orlando. The primary focus of "How it Feels to be Colored Me" is the relationship and differences between blacks and whites. 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." Before this time, she cites the only difference being that "[white people] rode through town and never lived there." During this part of her work, Zora is showing her childhood view that whites and blacks are no different from one another. This view changes as a result of her being sent to a school in Jacksonville. Now being outside her town of Eatonville, she began to experience what it was like to be colored. "But I am not tragically colored," she says. Zora makes it a point to show how she is not ashamed to be colored. At this point she seems to attack whites who continue to point out that she is the granddaughter of slaves by saying that blacks are moving forward. "The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said...

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How It Feels To Be Colored Me Analysis

...it did a few years back, maybe around the time Martin Luther King Jr. was alive and preaching peace and love. In Hurtson's "How It Feels To Be Colored Me", she expresses the idea that "At certain time, I have no race, I am me"(211). Hurston feels that society judges and criticize based on your race and ethnicity. She believes that it is quick to judge someone if they are...

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...1. The function of the first paragraph of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in setting the tone of the essay is for Hurston to express her views about being an African American girl in America. Hurston included strong diction in the first paragraph to inform her reader about her opinion of being colored. She also includes humor by using a hyperbole. Hurston says, “... 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.” The author is sort of making fun of her own race and is saying that she is not as special as what other people thought she was. 2. Hurston counters the argument of being colored is a bad thing and that nobody would want to be colored. She says, “But I...

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...Zora Neale Hurston recounts the day she began to feel colored in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Hurston does not recall feeling colored until after her thirteenth birthday because up until then she had lived in an “exclusively … colored town.” (1) Thus, surrounded by individuals coming from a similar culture background Hurston never felt different. However, Hurston began to feel colored once she moved schools to the white Jacksonville. Still though, Hurston does not feel too colored until she is “thrown against a sharp white background.” (3) When Hurston feels the most colored she experiences a sense of loneliness because she has no one of the same background to relate to at her current residence, unlike her previous home. However, sometimes feeling colored does not give her negative feedback, rather it empowers her. For instance, when Hurston visits a jazz club she revels in the music and feels as if her “face is painted red and yellow and her body is painted blue,” because she is “in the jungle and living the jungle way.” (3) After, when she looks around and realizes that her white friends did not experience the music as she did, Hurston is grateful to be colored. Because she has a greater appreciation for the rhythm and colors that her white friends cannot see....

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