How it feels to be colored me
Zora Neale Hurston in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" describes how her image of herself changed as other people's perceptions of color was imposed upon her throughout her life. She writes about how she accepts who she is, not as a color, black, but all that she is made up of. Black was how other people perceived her and was not as much of a problem for her it as it was for others. Up until the age of thirteen, Hurston lived in a town that was "exclusively a colored town"(1766). She knew of little difference between the skin color of whites and blacks, she wrote, "...white people differed from colored to me in that they rode through town and never lived there"(1767). At the age of thirteen she went to school in Jacksonville, she then discovered how people outside her town viewed her. She states, "I was not Zora of Orange County any more. I was a little colored girl"(1767). She felt this change effected the way she viewed her appearance, as well as inside her, she wrote " In my heart as well as in the mirror. I
She feels her skin color is not the problem; it is society's view of her color that is the problem. Boston:McGraw-Hill, 1998. . She also feels the sting of discrimination, but she does not let it make her bitter. When the music ends she "creeps back . to civilization" to find a white man "sitting motionless. She thinks of life as a game where it more exciting to get what you want, not fighting to keep what you have (1768). She writes that these people do not know her "How can they deny themselves the pleasure of my company" (1769). Works Cited Hurston, Zora Neale. Hurston does not think that being black makes any difference to her she writes, "I do not mind at all"(1767).
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Acceptance Essays
