Title: How It Feels to Be Colored Me Study Guide | GradeSaver
Headings: How It Feels to Be Colored Me Study Guide
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
by Zora Neale Hurston
How It Feels to Be Colored Me Study Guide

Content: How It Feels to Be Colored Me Study Guide | GradeSaver
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How It Feels to Be Colored Me
by Zora Neale Hurston
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About How It Feels to Be Colored Me How It Feels to Be Colored Me Summary Character List Glossary Themes Quotes and Analysis Paragraphs 1 – 4 Paragraphs 5 – 7 Paragraphs 8 – 17 Symbols, Allegory and Motifs Metaphors and Similes Irony Imagery About Zora Neale Hurston's Controversial Place in The Harlem Renaissance Literary Elements Essay Questions Quiz 1 Quiz 2 Citations
How It Feels to Be Colored Me Study Guide
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Published in 1928, Zora Neale Hurston 's " How It Feels to Be Colored Me " is a personal essay that illustrates the author's experience of living as a Black woman. Through metaphors, controversial statements, and anecdotes, Hurston implies that she views race as a social construct. While Hurston acknowledges that she sometimes faces discrimination, she also rejects the idea that slavery, abolished sixty years earlier, negatively affects her life. Hurston ultimately concludes that she considers the content of any human soul to be more or less interchangeable, no matter a person's skin pigmentation. Writing in a tone that conveys a mix of sincerity and sarcasm, Hurston argues that she "became colored" at thirteen, when she moved away from her hometown. Having grown up in the all-Black community of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston simply lived her life, oblivious to the world of white Americans who would see her as "colored" and project their prejudices onto her. By writing of herself as "becoming" colored, Hurston highlights how race is a social construct, not based on biologically distinct categories but on socially conditioned prejudice. She also refuses to see herself as a victim, refuting the idea that the social construct of race negatively affects her opportunities as an American. The essay reaches its climax when Hurston uses an analogy to encapsulate her view of race. Likening humans with different skin tones to different colored paper bags full of miscellany, Hurston suggests that the contents, if dumped out and jumbled together, could be randomly redistributed among the bags.