Title: How It Feels to Be Colored Me Summary & Analysis | LitCharts
Headings: How It Feels to Be Colored Me
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How It Feels to Be Colored Me Summary & Analysis

Content: In short, she was not colored until people made her feel that way. Active Themes
Related Quotes with Explanations
Hurston describes her childhood growing up in Eatonville, Florida, a successful all-black community. The only time she saw white people was when they were traveling through their town on their way to or from Orlando. The people of the town were indifferent to southern whites on their horses, but northern whites who drove through in cars were a spectacle, and many ventured out to the porch to gawk at them. Hurston introduces class and geography as crucial factors in her childhood understanding of race. This illustrates that the concept of race isn’t completely stable, as it’s affected by other factors of identity. Whether white people own horses or cars marks them as lower or upper class respectively. Southern whites, being closer socioeconomically to the black residents of Eatonville, can be freely be ignored, but northern whites, whose whiteness is amplified by wealth and geographic distance, are truly foreign and merit observation. Active Themes
Although some shied away from watching the tourists, Hurston loved to watch them and didn’t mind that the tourists noticed. She would speak and wave to them, sometimes walking alongside them as they passed through.