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

Hurston, 1938
Photo taken by Carl Van Vechten

This widely-praised essay by Zora Neale Hurston describes her struggle with her identity during the time when segregation was still present in America. She focuses on how discovering her own 'colored-ness' never led her to become ashamed of herself. Despite the discrimination she faced after leaving her exclusively black hometown, she found that it never angered her--she was too busy "sharpening her oyster knife" (115).

Being that Hurston's essay was featured in The Best American Essays of the Century makes is simple to see that she was a gifted writer. How It Feels to Be Colored Me challenged the mindsets of Americans when it was first written, and continues to do so today. However, her legacy as an author is not confined to this one piece. She has written four novels and over fifty short stories and essays. Written in 1928, this particular essay takes place in the deep south of Florida. Hurston recalls experiences from when she was thirteen years old, around 1904.

Hurston's purpose in writing this essay was to provoke the common thought that our race is what primarily defines us. In discovering this I also found that her intended audience is Americans with some prior knowledge of segregation throughout history.

I found that Hurston's method of accomplishing her purpose was by all means effective. The thing that stood out to me the most in Hurston's attempt to achieve her purpose was the analogy she used towards the end of the essay. She compares herself to a brown bag filled with random items, and others as different colored paper bags containing other random things. Hurston uses this analogy to say how our exterior 'color' does no predetermine what our interior holds, and that the "Great Stuffer of Bags" (117), or perhaps God, intended us to be this way.