How It Feels to Be Colored Me

In the essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Zora Hurston wrote an informal narrative about how she felt growing up while being an African American in the United States in the early 1900’s. As she grew up in a small, all African American town, Hurston rarely felt discriminated against until she had to change schools when she was thirteen. Even after officially acknowledging she was a different skin color than others in her school, Hurston continued to appreciate her lifestyle and dismiss the significance of racism. She was in disbelief that anyone would dislike her and even said in her essay, “how can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company!” (Hurston 117). Zora Hurston was the first African American to attend Barnard College. She published many successful books including her award winning autobiography. Hurston’s purpose of writing this essay, which was first published in 1928, was to share her positive experience of growing up as an African American. Even though Hurston faced some challenges throughout her life, she wanted to show the readers that she was pleased with her life and knew she had many opportunities. She was sharing her story with anyone who was interested in the black experience. In this essay, Hurston uses many rhetorical devices including imagery, personification and metaphors. Hurston uses imagery to describe the colors she experienced when she heard music – blue, red and yellow. She uses personification to describe the jazz orchestra as it played. The images of the sounds of the orchestra physically moving and attacking the music allow the reader to experience the sounds as she did. Hurston also uses the metaphor of people as various colored bags to show her audience that even though people of different races all look different on the outside, every person is the same on the inside. I believe that the author achieved her purpose because she was able to show her audience through her personal narrative that even in the presence of racial discrimination, she was happy with her life as a young African American woman.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-sh-zora-neale-hurston-google-doodle-20140107-story.html 

Hurston, Zora Neale. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." The Best American Essays of the Century. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 114-17. Print.