How It Feels to be Colored Me

255 – How It Feels To Be Colored Me – Zora Neale Hurston

Zora feels complete just as she is—colored—but not tragically colored. Her world changes in new places; but she is still she, not a race, just an American living to survive. Her prose is very poetic and metaphoric. Although she is treated differently in the white world, she is living in the present—unlike the white folk around her that reflect her back to slavery. She allows her imagination to take her places that she will never see and where color is not a factor. She is comfortable in her own skin and recognizes the opportunity that others miss by denying themselves the “pleasure of her company” (page 258).