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: 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. She walks the streets of Manhattan as a mythic, cosmic figure. Although she experiences discrimination, she can’t imagine why someone would deny themselves her company based on something so insubstantial as race. To explain her point, Hurston poses a metaphor of colored bags that correspond to racial identity and skin color. What draws her interest is not the appearance of the bags, but the contents, which she describes in deep and poignant detail. She claims that all the objects in these bags could be mixed up and replaced, with the contents of a white bag placed in a brown bag, without needing to tailor the contents to the color of the bag.