Title: How It Feels to Be Colored Me Summary - eNotes.com
Headings: How It Feels to Be Colored Me
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
How It Feels to Be Colored Me Summary
Summary
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Using a conversational tone and multiple colloquialisms, Hurston begins the essay by delving into her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, through anecdotes describing moments when she greeted neighbors, sang and danced in the streets, and viewed her surroundings from a comfortable spot on her front porch. Back then, she was “everybody’s Zora,” free from the alienating feeling of difference. However, when she was thirteen, her mother passed away, and Hurston left home to attend a boarding school in Jacksonville. There, she immediately became “colored.” Hurston says she does not consider herself “tragically colored” and begins weaving together extended metaphors that suggest her self-pride. She is too busy “sharpening her oyster knife” to stop to think about the pain that discrimination may cause, and as a “dark rock surged upon,” she emerges all the stronger for any hardships that she has had to endure. Hurston does, however, acknowledge moments when she feels her (or others’) racial difference, and an experience with a friend at a jazz club marks the distance between their lives. At the end of the essay, Hurston develops an extended metaphor in which she compares herself to a brown bag...
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