"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" Analysis

• "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is a descriptive and metaphorical essay by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1928.
• The essay explores Hurston's racial consciousness, from her childhood in an all-black community to her understanding of how the world views her as "colored."
• It was controversial due to Hurston's rejection of the idea that black identity must be tied to past and present injustices.

Title and Opening

• The title is ambiguous, referring either to the experience of being a person of color or to the feeling of having one's identity defined by others.
• Hurston states she makes no excuses for her racial status.
• She distinguishes herself by claiming her grandfather on her mother's side was not an Indian chief.

Childhood and Transformation

• Hurston recalls when she "became colored," describing her childhood in Eatonville, Florida.
• Eatonville was an all-black town, with white people only seen as tourists passing through.
• Young Hurston interacted with tourists, speaking to them and traveling with them, with her family eventually putting a stop to it.
• She noticed only minor differences between black and white people, mainly that white people did not live in town and paid her to perform.
• Hurston's views on race changed when she was sent to boarding school at 13, where she became conscious of her color and identity.

Rejection of Negative Views on Race

• Hurston rejects the notion of being "tragically colored.
• She believes strong people can overcome challenges, regardless of skin color.
• She dismisses the constant reminders of slavery.
• She views African Americans as recovering from the "surgery" of slavery.
• She would rather focus on the future than the past.
• She considers white people to be pitied for their struggle to maintain their status.

Feeling Colored

• Hurston sometimes feels like her younger self, especially when "thrown against a sharp white background.".
• At Barnard College, she feels different from the white students, comparing herself to a rock covered by a sea surge.
• She recognizes the social significance of her skin color when with a white friend in Harlem.
• The jazz music at the New World Cabaret deeply affects her, unlike her white friend, emphasizing the gulf between them.

Embrace of Common Humanity

• Hurston embraces her American identity and accepts her country, viewing herself as part of the whole.
• She expresses surprise at discrimination rather than anger.
• She sees herself as a sack filled with odds and ends, similar to other sacks of different colors, implying a shared human experience.

Main Themes in the Essay

• Hurston emphatically denies negative feelings about being African American, often with humor or straightforwardness.
• She mocks those who claim descent from Indian chiefs or who believe nature has given them a "lowdown dirty deal."
• Hurston acknowledges painful events, like her transformation into "a little colored girl," but does so reluctantly, focusing on positivity.
• She downplays slavery, refusing to dwell on its horrors and dismissing those who committed them.
• Hurston freely presents qualities that could be seen as flaws, like her desire for attention, conveying self-acceptance.

Figurative Devices

• Hyperbole: "I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief."
• Metaphor: "I became colored."
• Personification: "It is exclusively a colored town."
• Paradox: "The more venturesome would come out on the porch to watch them go past and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village."
• Slang: "chug something."
• Metaphor: The front porch was "a gallery seat for me."
• Metaphor: Referring to the gatepost as a "proscenium box for a born first-nighter."
• Sarcasm: "I hope the Miami Chamber of Commerce will please take notice."
• Dramatic Irony: The tourists "liked to hear me 'speak pieces'...and gave me generously of their small silver..., which seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they didn't know it."
• Metaphor: "It seemed that I had suffered a sea change." (a fundamental change or a great transformation)
• Metaphor: "I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl."
• Metaphor: "I became a fast brown--warranted not to rub nor run."
• Personification: "There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes."
• Metaphor: "I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood."
• Personification: Nature giving a "lowdown dirty deal."
• Metaphor: "I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
• Idiom: "Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves."
• Personification: Slavery "fails to register depression with me."
• Metaphor: "The operation was successful and the patient is doing well." (abolishing slavery)
• Personification: Struggle, reconstruction, and generation "said" instructions.
• Metaphor: "Slavery is the price I paid for civilization."
• Hyperbole: "No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory."
• Paradox: "The world to be won and nothing to be lost."
• Paradox/Parallelism: "I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame."
• Paradox/Metaphor: Holding the center of the national stage with spectators not know whether to "laugh or to weep."
• Metaphor: Achieving the unconscious Zora before "the Hegira."
• Metaphor: "I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself."
• Onomatopoeia: "Yeeeeooww!"
• Simile: "My pulse is throbbing like a war drum."
• Paradox: "He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored."
• Metaphor/Paradox: She is a fragment of the Great Soul, right or wrong.
• Simile: Feeling like a brown bag of miscellany.
• Paradox: Jumble of small things, priceless and worthless
• Idiom: A "first-water" diamond.
• Metaphor: The "Great Stuffer of Bags."