ZORA NEALE HURSTON

HOW IT FEELS TO BE
COLORED ME
 Get into groups of 3 and answer these group
questions
Ifsomebody asked you who you are? what
are the 5 most important things you would
say?
How important is race in Korea/ in your
personal lives
Do you think race is something absolute or
something that can change over time?
Explain why
Where do you think most racism stems from?
Why do you think there are so many racist
people in the world?

PRE DISCUSSION GROUP QUESTIONS

 Thestyle of the work is an autobiographical
essay
Does anybody know what an essay is?

HOW IT FEELS TO BE COLORED ME

 A piece of writing that gives the author's own argument.
Rather than just telling you information an essay is an
attempt by a writer to present information in a way that
creates a logical and persuasive statement about a
particular subject. (My definition)

The main focus of Hurstons essay is

on the concepts race and identity.

ESSAY
 Iremember the very day that I became colored. Up to
my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of
Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town.
In this passage what is she suggesting about the concept
of race in society?
 Hurston is saying that race only exists when we
divide ourselves by it.
In the earlier questions I asked you what parts of your
identity make you. Most people would not say they are
from Earth. This is because we dont divide ourselves by
planets. But we would say things like Korea, or black
because these are how we divide ourselves
Hurstonis suggesting that we dont actually
have races until we consider it a barrier. In the
same way our home planet is not a part of our identity
why should being a Korean be important?
 changes came in the family when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in
Jacksonville. I left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, a Zora. When I
disembarked from the river-boat at Jacksonville, she was no more. It
seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of Orange
County any more, I was now a little colored girl. I found it out in certain
ways. In my heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown--
warranted not to rub nor run.

Hurston does not realize or accept her identity

as a colored person until she leaves her
homogenously black town.
She understands it in her heart. She starts to feel
colored because she feels there are things like
cultural and personal differences between
herself and the white people around her.
She also sees herself physically as colored. We
can understand this as her physically seeing and
identifying people by colors. This is the moment
she learns that race is a barrier between others.
 But
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow
dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do
not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of
Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given
them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but
about it
Hurston is suggesting here that she is different from
other black people. The most important thing she
lacks here is the idea of self-hatred that other
blacks were known for. She does not feel that
being black is a misfortune for her. Rather she
simply seems apathetic towards her racial
identity.
This
is similar to Langston Hughes criticism of
middle class black people
 Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I
am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register
depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past.
The operation was successful and the patient is doing
well, thank you. Slavery is the price I paid for
civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a
bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through
my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a
greater chance for glory. The world to be won and
nothing to be lost.
What do you think this passage means?
 She starts out by saying that her slave lineage is
mentioned often.
Next she states that being descended from slaves
does not affect her emotionally.
She describes slavery as a medical procedure that
was successful in bettering the world. Why do you think
she uses this terminology?
She describes slavery as a bully (forced) adventure
and says that what she has is worth the suffering of her
ancestors.
Finally she says that she herself (modern Americans)
has the best chance at glory out of everybody alive
today.
She can rise as high as she wants and she has nothing
to lose.
What do you think about this interpretation of slavery and her ancestry?
Do you like it? How do you think other black people would feel about it?
Ifeel most colored when I am thrown against
a sharp white background. 10 For instance at
Barnard. "Beside the waters of the Hudson" I
feel my race. Among the thousand white
persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and
overswept, but through it all, I remain myself.
What is Hurston saying about her racial
identity? What is the struggle that is described
in this section?
 Hurstonis saying that her racial identity comes
from the differences she feels between herself
and the white people around her.
She is stating that being around so many white
people can threaten her black identity but
she is able to remain herself through it all.
 Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the
contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The
New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any
little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt
way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number.
This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with
primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow
those heathen--follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I
shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the
jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is
painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give
pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra
wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization
with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.
 PARTNER QUESTIONS.
1. What is the setting described in this part of the essay?
2. Why does the narrator have nothing in common with
the other Jazz club patron
3. How does the narrator feel about the jazz music
4. What is the effect the music has on the narrator
5. What types of images/ experiences does it make her
feel
6. How does the Jazz music affect the other guest?
7. What is the narrator trying to suggest about Jazz music
and race in this section?
 1. The setting at this part is a cabaret Jazz club. A club with a large band.

2. The other person at the Jazz club is white and so their experiences in life are
completely different and incomparable
3. She feels that Jazz is random/ wild and overwhelmingly powerful
4. Jazz music brings out the wild and untamed side of the narrator. It turns her
into a wild and uncontrollable beast
5. The music makes her feel like she is in a jungle/ wilderness. She feels wild and
she wants to hunt and kill something. She feels out of control
6. The other guest simply enjoys the music and thinks it is good. He feels no strong
connection to it.
7. Maybe she is saying that things like art are what can divide people and they
create differences between people more than things like skin color. Experience
and values divide people more than any physical attribute.
 At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain
angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty
as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. So far
as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich
with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in
a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora
emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its
string of beads.
Who is Peggy Hopkins Joyce? Why is the narrator comparing herself to
this woman?
How does the narrator escape her race? Is this a good or a bad thing?
 Peggy Hopkins Joyce is a symbol of high class white women. She has a long high class
sounding name. She is wealthy enough to have a carriage, she is wearing expensive
clothing and she has aristocratic manners. This is a woman that socially should be
considered higher than the narrator. However, the narrator is suggesting that Peggy
Joyce still below her.
The narrator describes herself as cosmic and having great power. The narrator loses
her race when she begins to believe in herself and think she is higher class. To become
higher class she simply tilts her hat at a higher angle and walks down the street with
pride. When she does this she is not part of a period in time nor is she colored she is
infinitely feminine and beautiful.
What do you feel about this idea of escaping race as something we do through pride in
our individual selves?
How do you feel about greatness being connected to the idea of pride?
 I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely
a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or
wrong
She is suggesting that nations and races exist to bind and contain people
but she does not accept them because she is part of a great soul that
connects people and cannot be divided.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It
merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my
company? It's beyond me.
When people disrespect her identity she simply is confused as to how
these people could not want to be around somebody so great.
How do you feel about this sort of reaction is it positive?
 But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped
against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white,
red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a
jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water
diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a
key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old
shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail
bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried
flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag.
On the ground before you is the jumble it held--so much like the
jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be
dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering
the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less
would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags
filled them in the first place--who knows?
 FINAL QUESTIONS
What are the colored bags supposed to
represent in the story?
Why does she say all of these things are
in the bag? What is the point?
What is the meaning of the section
could they (the bags) be emptied, that
all might be dumped in a single heap
and the bags refilled without altering the
content of any greatly
Who is the great stuffer of bags
What is the main message in this section.
 1.
the colored bags are supposed to be a symbol of
people
2.people (their personalities) are comprised of many
things and experiences that they have encountered
throughout their individual lives
3.Hurston is asking that if all people emptied
everything inside themselves could we take a random
set of experiences and still be relatively similar to each
other? She is asking if the experiences inside races are
truly that different.
4. The great stuffer of bags is God or simply a creator
5.
The main message in this section is that even though
we may have different skin colors we still are
comprised of very much the same stuff on the inside.