Asked by helen
You have read an excerpt from How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston. Analyze how
Hurston tells stories from her childhood and family’s past to describe her racial identity. Be sure to use
evidence from the text to develop your essay. Write a well-organized, text-dependent response. Be sure to save time to edit and review your work for complete sentences, spelling, punctuation, and appropriate
language. (W.12.2)
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Zora Neale Hurston uses vivid, personal stories from her childhood and her family’s past in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” to shape a complex, self-possessed portrait of her racial identity. Rather than presenting race as a single, static oppression, Hurston traces how contexts and memories—her life in Eatonville, the moment she “became colored,” and the family and town stories that surrounded her—produce a confident, sometimes playful view of herself as an individual who refuses to be reduced to victimhood. Through anecdote, contrast, and figurative language, Hurston shows that her sense of self is formed as much by ordinary life and community as by the larger social meanings others attach to her skin.
Hurston’s earliest stories—about growing up in Eatonville—establish the baseline for her identity: a childhood in which race was not the defining category. She explains that Eatonville “was not a town of ‘colored people’ — it was simply a town,” and that she was “Zora of Eatonville” long before she was labeled by outsiders. By telling these small-town, family-centered memories (friends, neighbors, and the rhythms of community life), Hurston emphasizes that her first sense of self was social and ordinary, not racialized. The anecdotal tone here—that of a person recalling everyday details—makes her point: race only becomes salient later, when she is placed in settings that mark her as different.
She then narrates a pivotal memory—“I remember the very day that I became colored”—to show the moment when the outside world imposed a racial identity on her. The anecdote functions as a turning point: the childhood atmosphere of Eatonville, where no special attention was paid to race, is contrasted with the moment she is treated as “colored.” Hurston does not linger in self-pity; instead, she treats the change almost as a fact to be noted and examined. That restrained, reportage-like recounting shifts the reader’s attention from a simple tale of injury to a more nuanced reflection on how identity can be conferred by social reaction.
Throughout the essay Hurston uses family and town stories as material for rhetorical moves that reshape the meaning of being “colored.” For example, she refuses the role of tragedy: “I am not tragically colored.” That flat declarative sentence, placed after her childhood and community anecdotes, converts personal history into an argument—her lived experiences do not match the stereotype of the tragic, powerless black subject. Hurston’s metaphorical language further reconfigures identity as agency. The memorable line “I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife” turns adversity into preparation and appetite; the oyster-knife image suggests readiness to open and claim the world’s riches rather than to mourn losses. These figurative moments grow organically out of her stories: because her life was full of concrete, domestic scenes and family narrative, she can respond to racial assignation with concrete, witty self-assertion.
Hurston also makes use of contrasts between settings and audiences in her anecdotes to show that racial identity is situational. She writes, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, and sometimes I do not— I am different from the others, but not less,” and she describes feeling “no race” in some contexts (“At certain times I have no race”), while in others she is sharply aware of being “colored.” The stories of Eatonville versus the stories of encounters outside it create this alternating pattern: family and hometown memories provide a source of belonging and dignity; external episodes reveal how others’ expectations try to fix her into a single category. By telling both kinds of stories, Hurston argues that the feeling of being “colored” is produced as much by social circumstances as by any inner essence.
Finally, Hurston’s narrative voice—wry, confident, and proudly individual—emerges from the accumulation of childhood and family stories. Rather than presenting ancestry or community as a burden, she treats them as armor and reason for celebration. Her anecdotes are not merely descriptive; they are rhetorical tools she uses to control the meaning of race in her life. The combined effect of telling everyday family stories, recounting the moment of racial awareness, and then asserting independence produces a portrait of racial identity that is self-fashioned, variable, and resistant to pity.
In sum, Hurston’s use of childhood and family stories in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” shows racial identity as something formed through experience, context, and deliberate self-definition. By grounding her reflections in concrete anecdotes from Eatonville and the turning points that followed, she converts personal narrative into a broader claim: being “colored” need not be tragic or uniform; it can be one element in a lively, self-authored life.
Hurston’s earliest stories—about growing up in Eatonville—establish the baseline for her identity: a childhood in which race was not the defining category. She explains that Eatonville “was not a town of ‘colored people’ — it was simply a town,” and that she was “Zora of Eatonville” long before she was labeled by outsiders. By telling these small-town, family-centered memories (friends, neighbors, and the rhythms of community life), Hurston emphasizes that her first sense of self was social and ordinary, not racialized. The anecdotal tone here—that of a person recalling everyday details—makes her point: race only becomes salient later, when she is placed in settings that mark her as different.
She then narrates a pivotal memory—“I remember the very day that I became colored”—to show the moment when the outside world imposed a racial identity on her. The anecdote functions as a turning point: the childhood atmosphere of Eatonville, where no special attention was paid to race, is contrasted with the moment she is treated as “colored.” Hurston does not linger in self-pity; instead, she treats the change almost as a fact to be noted and examined. That restrained, reportage-like recounting shifts the reader’s attention from a simple tale of injury to a more nuanced reflection on how identity can be conferred by social reaction.
Throughout the essay Hurston uses family and town stories as material for rhetorical moves that reshape the meaning of being “colored.” For example, she refuses the role of tragedy: “I am not tragically colored.” That flat declarative sentence, placed after her childhood and community anecdotes, converts personal history into an argument—her lived experiences do not match the stereotype of the tragic, powerless black subject. Hurston’s metaphorical language further reconfigures identity as agency. The memorable line “I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife” turns adversity into preparation and appetite; the oyster-knife image suggests readiness to open and claim the world’s riches rather than to mourn losses. These figurative moments grow organically out of her stories: because her life was full of concrete, domestic scenes and family narrative, she can respond to racial assignation with concrete, witty self-assertion.
Hurston also makes use of contrasts between settings and audiences in her anecdotes to show that racial identity is situational. She writes, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, and sometimes I do not— I am different from the others, but not less,” and she describes feeling “no race” in some contexts (“At certain times I have no race”), while in others she is sharply aware of being “colored.” The stories of Eatonville versus the stories of encounters outside it create this alternating pattern: family and hometown memories provide a source of belonging and dignity; external episodes reveal how others’ expectations try to fix her into a single category. By telling both kinds of stories, Hurston argues that the feeling of being “colored” is produced as much by social circumstances as by any inner essence.
Finally, Hurston’s narrative voice—wry, confident, and proudly individual—emerges from the accumulation of childhood and family stories. Rather than presenting ancestry or community as a burden, she treats them as armor and reason for celebration. Her anecdotes are not merely descriptive; they are rhetorical tools she uses to control the meaning of race in her life. The combined effect of telling everyday family stories, recounting the moment of racial awareness, and then asserting independence produces a portrait of racial identity that is self-fashioned, variable, and resistant to pity.
In sum, Hurston’s use of childhood and family stories in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” shows racial identity as something formed through experience, context, and deliberate self-definition. By grounding her reflections in concrete anecdotes from Eatonville and the turning points that followed, she converts personal narrative into a broader claim: being “colored” need not be tragic or uniform; it can be one element in a lively, self-authored life.
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