ESSAY CEMETERY

Themes ·        Living in an all-black town ·        Whites as tourists ·        Realization that she is colored ·        Fine with being black ·        Delight with white scrutiny ·        Black ancestors fought for equality and she reaps the fruit ·        Delight with whites' scrutiny of blacks ·        Blacks are at the center of American cultural attention ·        Relishing jazz music ·        Difference between black and white music appreciation ·        Identities: colored vs. no race ·        Nostalgia ·         Everyone is the same when it boils down to it Style and devices ·        Speaks in the first person for black people “The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!" and the generation before said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid f

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 wh