Answer these questions about “How it Feels to be Colored Me”:
Look at the language of this piece: What verb does Hurston use? What do these verbs indicate about Hurston’s attitude toward her life?
-"I remember the very day that I became colored" Hurston used 'colored ' as a verb in her story. This verb indicated that she did not always think of her self as colored, she just thought of herself as a person. She never distinguished between white and black. It seems to me that she uses it more of a feeling than an actual thing. It is more of an emotion someone feels when they realize that they are different from someone else, when someone is "thrown against a sharp white background." When she focuses on verbs, she is showing that she feels like …show more content…
It surprises her. She is very confident in herself. Sometimes she may 'feel her colored-ness ' but she is not ashamed about it, nor does she whine when she is discriminated against. She feels that if someone discriminates against her than it 's their loss because she 's great. “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It 's beyond me.”
"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is a narration about a part of one specific woman 's life, but it has widespread significance. What are some of the ways Hurston makes this more than just the story of a single individual?
- By the way that it could be applied to many different people. There were probably many people who grew up just thinking about themselves as themselves and then one day 'became colored. ' This may have happened by being put in a new place where they were one dark face among a sea of white faces, or even the other way around with their being only one white face in a sea of dark faces. The point is there is likely a point in an African American 's life when they are made to 'become colored.” She seems to be trying to teach others to be themselves, and not defined by their skin …show more content…
She is comparing the 'brown paper bag ' to herself, and her life where as the other bags of many different colors such as red, yellow, and white are all other people. Sh talked about how there is a jumbled pile of different things in each bag. In each bag there are some things worth a lot and others worth little. This is saying that in each person there are positive and negative traits. She also says that if you dumped out the content of every bad together then randomly put things back into the bags they would still hold about the same content. This is saying that we are all made up of the same stuff, so much so that if we were mixed up we would still be the same with minuscule differences that wouldn 't even matter. She even says at the end “Perhaps this is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place - who knows?” This is her saying that, maybe God, (or whoever created people if one believes in a higher being) made us this way, all equal on the inside, and it doesn 't really matter what we look like on the
Look at the language of this piece: What verb does Hurston use? What do these verbs indicate about Hurston’s attitude toward her life?
-"I remember the very day that I became colored" Hurston used 'colored ' as a verb in her story. This verb indicated that she did not always think of her self as colored, she just thought of herself as a person. She never distinguished between white and black. It seems to me that she uses it more of a feeling than an actual thing. It is more of an emotion someone feels when they realize that they are different from someone else, when someone is "thrown against a sharp white background." When she focuses on verbs, she is showing that she feels like …show more content…
It surprises her. She is very confident in herself. Sometimes she may 'feel her colored-ness ' but she is not ashamed about it, nor does she whine when she is discriminated against. She feels that if someone discriminates against her than it 's their loss because she 's great. “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It 's beyond me.”
"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is a narration about a part of one specific woman 's life, but it has widespread significance. What are some of the ways Hurston makes this more than just the story of a single individual?
- By the way that it could be applied to many different people. There were probably many people who grew up just thinking about themselves as themselves and then one day 'became colored. ' This may have happened by being put in a new place where they were one dark face among a sea of white faces, or even the other way around with their being only one white face in a sea of dark faces. The point is there is likely a point in an African American 's life when they are made to 'become colored.” She seems to be trying to teach others to be themselves, and not defined by their skin …show more content…
She is comparing the 'brown paper bag ' to herself, and her life where as the other bags of many different colors such as red, yellow, and white are all other people. Sh talked about how there is a jumbled pile of different things in each bag. In each bag there are some things worth a lot and others worth little. This is saying that in each person there are positive and negative traits. She also says that if you dumped out the content of every bad together then randomly put things back into the bags they would still hold about the same content. This is saying that we are all made up of the same stuff, so much so that if we were mixed up we would still be the same with minuscule differences that wouldn 't even matter. She even says at the end “Perhaps this is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place - who knows?” This is her saying that, maybe God, (or whoever created people if one believes in a higher being) made us this way, all equal on the inside, and it doesn 't really matter what we look like on the