Title: How it Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston Plot Summary | LitCharts
Headings: How it Feels to be Colored Me Summary
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How it Feels to be Colored Me Summary

Content: In contrast, white people are haunted by the historical guilt of African-American slavery. Hurston notes that she doesn’t always “feel [her] race,” but she feels it most often around white people, as she does at Barnard College in New York. But she describes the feeling in positive terms, as it brings her sense of self into greater relief. She tells an anecdote about bringing a white friend to a jazz club in her black neighborhood. As the band strikes up, Hurston enters a trance where she makes contact with a more primitive, animal nature. She describes herself with painted skin brandishing an African spear. But when she returns to reality, her white friend merely compliments the music. Hurston pities him because what was an ecstatic experience to her is just “music” to him. At times, Hurston feels she has no race but “Zora.” She belongs to no specific place or time.