How it feels to be colored
In “How it feels to be colored me,” Zora narrates the story of the day she went to Jacksonville, which is a huge American town and therefore became colored. However, she narrates the story during the day, a moment in which racism and rejection were evil and existed, Hurston’s essay depicts her pride as a black and individuality rather than increasing the color note (Hurston, 42). She claims that she does not categorize herself according to race, but by the fact, she is a Zora. One of the most significant points in her story is when she said,” I have no diverse feeling about being an American citizen and colored.” This statement shows the Du Bois’ approach of double awareness, which is the sentiment that one’s uniqueness split into many parts making it hard to identify oneself. The story shows the challenge in complicated interaction of the cultural society and the person (Hurston, 42).
Much of her work commemorates the different cultural account of the Native Americans and reviewed groups who the whites ignore or hides through the misinterpretation of the American media. However, the story grounds on smear racial discrimination in America and Hurston approaches this based on a discovery of being colored. While she expresses her civil and racial arrogance, she approaches the notions of white and colored as a different resistance that appears to define the society essentially along a racial procession. Hurston eradicates all the consuming definitions of race and sees herself as a unique person whose individuality illustrates her race and culture among an assortment of features (Hurston, 42).
This idea of being colored grounds as Hurston relates her childhood with her adult life. She gives a little difference between herself and the Americans except that they traveled through the town but never lived there. Her race becomes the main aspect of her seen uniqueness. This reveals when her change from everybody’s Zora to the young colored girl makes a change from a word that includes her identity and value. She replaces her personal uniqueness with the huge unfriendly features of race and sex (Hurston, 42). During her childhood life in Florida, Zora did not appear different or separated. After the death of her mother, she went to a boarding school in Jacksonville where others considered her colored. She did not take herself as disastrously colored but she uses a simile and compares herself to a brown bag full of many pieces and bobs.
At this period, she ceases to be a Zora but a young colored girl. However, she does not find things disastrous unlike others who take colored as a curse. She sees slavery as an ancient thing and feels comfortable on the way of being an American out of a possible slave. Her idea in this is that the blacks went from Africa to get back to their own culture at the slavery cost. She does not feel irritated by the position of the Blacks in America. She is delighted to appreciate because of her small condition, everything she does will be taken strongly either for good or bad. She thinks that the Americans are worse because they feel guilty for rejecting the blacks (Hurston, 42).
However, she does not feel colored; she feels the color effect when encircled by the whites. This still does not affect her, but she remains herself even in the situation. Because she is aware of her color, sometimes she accepts the fact that she is not racial, mostly when she is in Harlem. Instead, she appears to be the immense Zora, meaning the everlasting woman with the rope of beads. Neglect does not irritate her but what increases her fear is that people does not want to relate with her (Hurston, 43).
As a result, Zora feels like a collection of features that are the amount of her dreams, emotions and experiences. Therefore, everyone acts the same in judging the contents of our internal thinking. Hurston gives an example of a time she went to a club with an American friend and found herself affected by the musical tones. The music did not affect her American friend therefore; she describes this as a racial difference. Despite her being African women, Hurston does not involve in self-sympathy but matches the racial difference and discrimination (Hurston, 43).
At the end of the story, she uses the sign of the colored bags to show what people are like. She describes people to have full hopes, wishes and irritations. She stresses that if people throw these bags away, there would be equality regardless of the color or race. Colored Me involves the approach of the Harlem rebirth on race in America and on the native artist’s depiction of racial identity. At one point, Hurston’s variable connection with her race and the main wishes to show herself as a person may cause problems based on Hughes propositions in his story. However, Hurston’s story proves the option between writer and black writer. She claims that racial awareness is significant but if made the only defining feature of a person, it appears reductive (Hurston, 44).
Hurston divisive argument on slavery permits more review on the writer’s description of race and individuality. She states that slavery counts as being past and thus it does not worry her. In addition, she says that the description condition of the whites is hard; describing the game of keeping what one has never as an exciting part of the game. She appears to eradicate herself from an account of oppression and a writer’s custom of disastrous account styles. She outlines herself as a modern person not defined by the past. Her lack of argument on her female individuality makes her gain careful effort of removing herself from the situation of lack of power and society (Hurston, 44).
Her new environment in the school has been under certain academic inspection due to her identification of racial uniqueness with her gender stereotype. In Cabaret, her color upholds her and describes herself as a person in the wilderness. Ancient anger is one of the terms she uses to show the knowledge of the label she addresses while anger relates to danger. In that part, she changes the simple typecast as something foreign into something unsafe. Zora’s approach of the Cabaret sustains a controlled relation between the spirit of the Jazz music and its African sources; however, it ridicules the ease of the white label that has founded the notion for entertainment (Hurston, 44).
In colored me, Hurston show a valuable review of her struggle for racial and individuality connection. She shows notions of the new Negro in her reconnection with the ancient typecasts and her integration of a modern and confrontational colored voice. She declines the idea to define her. Herself commemoration is complicated and becomes an ever-changing person that expresses her denial by any feature of her identity (Hurston, 44).
Work cited
Hurston, Zora N. How It Feels to Be Colored Me. , 2015. Print.
