Title: How It Feels To Be Colored Me - Wikipedia
Headings: How It Feels To Be Colored Me
How It Feels To Be Colored Me
Summary
References

Content: How It Feels To Be Colored Me - Wikipedia
How It Feels To Be Colored Me
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
" How It Feels To Be Colored Me " (1928) is an essay by Zora Neale Hurston published in World Tomorrow as a "white journal sympathetic to Harlem Renaissance writers", illustrating her circumstance as an African-American woman in the early 20th century in America. Most of Hurston's work involved her "Negro" characterization that were so true to reality, that she was known as an excellent anthropologist, "As an anthropologist and as an African-American writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston was uniquely situated to explore the critical possibilities of marginality." Coming from an all- black community in Eatonville, Florida, she lived comfortably due to her father holding high titles, John Hurston was a local Baptist preacher and the mayor of Eatonville. After the death of her mother in 1904, at the age of thirteen, Hurston was forced to live with relatives in Jacksonville who worked as domestic servants. In her essay Hurston references Jacksonville where she describes that she felt "thrown against a sharp white background". Eatonville and Jacksonville became the main influential settings for her essay "How it Feels To Be Colored Me" and her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In both writings Hurston begins to investigate the true meaning of individuality and personality, through the usage of anecdotes, imagery, tone, and figurative language. Hurston's writings allow the reader to understand "personal expression to the arena of public discourse without losing the ties to their home cultures and languages"
Summary
Downtown Jacksonville in 1914
Hurston begins the essay about her childhood in the town of Eatonville, Florida. She describes watching white people from her front porch, and dances and sings for them in return for money. Hurston becomes comfortable with her surroundings in the small town of Eatonville.