How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston - Summary

Up to the age of thirteen Hurston lives in the exclusively Negro town Eatonville, Florida. The only whites she encounters are people passing through to Orlando. Hurston likes to sit on the front porch and greet them and converse with them. She dances and they give her money. Blacks "deplored any joyful tendencies" she has but love her nevertheless.

At thirteen she is sent to school in Jacksonville. She is no longer Zora, but a little colored girl. However she does not find this tragic, unlike others who think being colored is a curse. She considers slavery to be in the past and feels that she is well on the way to becoming an American out of a potential slave. Blacks went from Africa to civilization at the cost of Slavery and it was worth it.

Hurston does not feel intimidated by the status of Blacks in America. She is thrilled to know that due to her inferior status everything she does will be scrutinized particularly strongly, for better and worse. She thinks the whites are worse off because they feel guilty for mistreating blacks.

Zora does not always feel colored. She feels most colored when surrounded by whites. Sometimes she is crowded by whites but remains herself through it.

Just as she is aware of her color, sometimes she is aware of whites' whiteness. Listening to jazz music, she identifies with her entire being with the primitive wilderness to which the music throws her back. Her white friend on the other hand does not react strongly at all to this music.

Sometimes she feels she has no race, such as when she is in Harlem. Instead, she becomes "the cosmic Zora", "the eternal feminine with its string of beads".

Discrimination does not anger Zora. Instead she is astonished that anyone does not want to be in her company.

Most of all Zora feels like a collection of traits that are simply the sum of her feelings, dreams, and experiences. Inside, everyone is the same- judging by the contents of our insides, we cannot be told apart.

Zora Neale Hurston. Illustration by Monica Ahanonu. Source