How it Feels to be Colored Me

Blog Post 1
Zora Neale Hurston

Written by famous writer and civil rights activist Zora Neale Hurston, "How it Feels to be Colored Me" tells the reader about how Hurston views herself in a country where she is discriminated for her skin. While many discriminated Black people felt hurt and destroyed by their situation, Hurston let everyone know through her essay that she didn't let that bother her but rather focused on enriching herself as a person.
While many believed being Black in this time of history was undesirable, Hurston fully appreciated her setting, which she shows through her diction in the quote, "The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said 'On the line!' The Reconstruction said 'Get set!'; and the generation before said 'Go!' I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep" (Hurston 115). Expressions such as "On the line," "Get set," and "Go" have feelings of positive anticipation that encourages an athlete for a successful round, just as Hurston believes she has been encouraged by moments in history to pursue success and will not stop doing so. She also states that although being Black came with certain perks, she did not let only her skin define who she was. She writes, "At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue...The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time, I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads" (Hurston 117). Using this metaphor, she emphasizes her presence in the world, how society's expectation of her race does not decides how she feels, and how great she feels to be herself.
Hurston effectively and quite powerfully tells the people who expect her to be broken in some way that she's not and never will be.

Colored in Her Own Way
Zora Neale Hurston lives with her own goals among a society where she isn't expected to. She enjoys her life the way she wants to in the skin she's in and the way irrelevant to the skin she's in.

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