When was how it feels to be colored me written

Sort order. Mar 21, Ana rated it really liked it Shelves: university , american-literature , essays , race-and-slavery. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? Aug 26, Kimberly rated it it was amazing.

It's beyond me. I love her writing, it gives me hope in humanity and helps me to see the good inside people. Sep 17, Jaycee rated it it was amazing Shelves: english-class , favorites , books , classics , poetry. Sep 28, morgyn west added it. Seriously beautiful. I loved this. I read it for school but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mar 17, Jessica Baumgartner rated it it was amazing. Zora is one of my favorite women in history. She didn't let anyone of anything stop her or bring her down. What makes this specific piece stand out is the fact that it connects with people of all races. Anyone who has been the only one of their kind in a room full of another demographic can connect to this, and people who have never had that experience can find a deeper understanding of those who do face it.

Apr 08, Athena rated it did not like it. I wasn't a huge fan of this short story. Kudos to Hurston for not acknowledging or accepting racism. While I did like the point she was making, which was that no matter how different we look on the outside, we are made of the same stuff on the inside.

Everybody deals with loss and joy, pain and suffering, nostalgia, and regrets. Yes it was very eloquent but it just didn't do anything for me. Oct 20, Steven rated it really liked it Shelves: short-story , , biographical. Jan 30, Heath rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. The language and metaphors are amazing. I can't believe I have never read anything by Zora before.

Aug 01, Liz rated it really liked it. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a "Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant.

In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held--so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place--who knows? Apr 24, Christopher rated it really liked it Shelves: race-relations , woman-author , non-fiction , semi-autobiographical , autobiographical , memoir , essays , african-american-author.

For some reason, this is cataloged under fictional essays at a lot of libraries. It didn't come across that way to me, but I tagged it as both autobiographical and semi-autobiographical for my own sake. This is a pleasant personal essay by Zora Neale Hurston that examines what she feels it means to be a person of color in America. She of course grew up and lived in the era of Jim Crow, but she also was a vibrant and integral part of the Harlem Renaissance.

Because of that latter fact, I believe For some reason, this is cataloged under fictional essays at a lot of libraries. Because of that latter fact, I believe she finds a sense of self-empowerment. Her attitude is that of "haters gonna hate" but in a time when people who looked like her were literally being hung up from trees.

She finds the hate of others to be nonsensical because she knows how valuable she is, and this is a message that is still relevant and important. It's super short and great. Go read it. May 08, Sharon rated it it was amazing. Hurston expresses a fascinating resistance to being labeled or identifying with any particular race, group, or classification. At times, she recognizes that she fits into certain molds, but on the whole, she remains distinct and even uncontainable.

Oct 18, Max Urai rated it really liked it Shelves: essays. This is just delightful. We have so much to learn from her. Feb 11, Chelsea Moreen rated it it was amazing Shelves: read-to-buy , non-fiction , author-of-colour , short-story , classics , essays. This woman was absolutely extraordinary.

This is a must read, it's so short but so impactful. Mar 11, Debra Murray rated it really liked it. I always say be in my shoes for a minute to experience what I go through. Yes, just one minute! Oct 02, Max Cannon rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction. Dec 21, Logan rated it liked it Shelves: three-stars. It's very well written, though. Feb 27, Aleea rated it it was amazing Shelves: american-lit.

She took things as they were and saw no reason to be miserable because of it, or pay it any mind. It was just the way things were. She feels all the emotions in that music: anger, sadness, happiness, all at ones. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong. And it was because she was able to love herself, she felt like all those people who oppressed black people, or any culture for that matter, were just fools to her.

And it was their loss for not getting to know her, or any other coloured person, because they have so much to offer. Aug 19, Shelly Rawlings rated it it was amazing Shelves: required-readings. I am very familiar with the work of Zora Neale Hurston, and this is one of my absolute favorite stories from her. When I read it, Hurston gave me this idea of lenses that really shape the way I read it—she not only discusses race, but also the idea of being a woman. Putting both together creates an interesting lens through which to see the world.

Say, for example, that women go through life with a blue lens over everything—they see things a little bit differently than men. But blacks go through l I am very familiar with the work of Zora Neale Hurston, and this is one of my absolute favorite stories from her. But blacks go through life with a red lens—seeing things differently than white people. I think we are forced to think that way—eliminating either of these identities takes away from the overall experience. It is accurate, too.

Hurston grew up in a small, southern, and predominantly black township, and that had a huge impact on her writing and how she depicted race.

It lives on because it provides a few into a world that not all of us are aware of. This intersectionality plagues me, and the fact that an author is able to make me think that much about a text only tells me that it is nothing but good. Jan 16, Emma rated it really liked it Shelves: reviewed , school , african-american-literature , slavery , history , essays.

The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored. A beautiful, light-hearted essay and one that will definitely stick with me.

I loved Hurston's comedic narration, her elegant metaphors, her strong, courageous, proud voice. I've really enjoyed reading about her in this unit and, aga Music. I've really enjoyed reading about her in this unit and, again, been reminded of why I chose it, above all, for this semester.

How it Feels to Be Colored Me is a nice contrast to the darker, more intense narratives, essays, and such that I've read for African American literature, and I'm v glad to have been assigned it. I hope to read more of Hurston's work in the near future. Having grown up in the all-Black community of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston simply lived her life, oblivious to the world of white Americans who would see her as "colored" and project their prejudices onto her.

By writing of herself as "becoming" colored, Hurston highlights how race is a social construct, not based on biologically distinct categories but on socially conditioned prejudice.

She also refuses to see herself as a victim, refuting the idea that the social construct of race negatively affects her opportunities as an American. The essay reaches its climax when Hurston uses an analogy to encapsulate her view of race.

Likening humans with different skin tones to different colored paper bags full of miscellany, Hurston suggests that the contents, if dumped out and jumbled together, could be randomly redistributed among the bags. She says the result would be more or less the same as it was at the start, and suggests that maybe God stuffed the bags with the same random, universal contents.

Exploring the themes of race as a social construct, performance, racialized public spaces, and rejection of victimhood, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" has had a controversial reception. Among other arguments, critics point to Hurston's use of Black stereotypes in the scene where she likens jazz music to primitiveness and "being in the jungle.

Regardless of the controversy Hurston's work generates, the essay is widely anthologized and quoted. For hundreds of years, white settlers Once she moves to Jacksonville, Zora's life changes. Her race and the color of her skin unfairly define who she is Fortunately, Hurston, herself, refuses to give up her What important word does Hurston repeat in paragraph 7?