"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston is an African-American novelist. Born in the south in 1891, she experienced discrimination towards “colored” people first hand. These personal experiences establish her credibility in this passage.

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is about Hurston’s experiences that helped to shape her outlook on life and find her true identity. After being sent to boarding school at the age of thirteen, she truly felt racism in America, but instead of letting that negatively affect her, she used others’ hatred to boost her pride for being an African-American woman.

Written in 1928, this passage is directed towards other African American people during this time. She is trying to tell them not to be beat down by discrimination, but to have pride in their own race. She makes many allusions to African tribal culture, mentioning things like body paint and assegais, which strengthens her purpose of bringing out African pride.

One of the most powerful ways that Hurston communicates her purpose is through metaphors. For example, she says, “No, I do not weep at the world– I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife” (115). Metaphors like this show her African pride and tell others not to let discrimination knock them down. She also uses metaphors to describe her self-identity. She concludes the passage saying, “I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall...in company with other bags, white, red and yellow...[They] all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly” (117). This conclusion shows her belief that she is no different than other people, regardless of race.

Lastly, Hurston’s use of colloquialisms, such as when she says, “I would probably ‘go a piece of the way’ with them, as we say in farthest Florida” (114), gives this passage a conversational tone that is easy to understand. Her purpose is conveyed clearly, which helps to her passage appeal to people’s pathos. Because of this, I believe that Hurston was successful in accomplishing her purpose to instill pride within African Americans during this time.

African-American Pride Is Greater than Racism
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