If you are color blind, can you still dream in color? “How It Feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “Champion of the World” by Maya Angelou are two autobiographies that express a story about the author’s childhood struggle. Both women were black and experienced suppression and discrimination during the 1900s; however, the stories are hardly analogous. “How It Feels to be Colored Me” is the superior story of the two. Hurston forms a more personal story line and uses rhetoric devices to create an effervescent environment to appeal to the audience.
Hurston writes a narrative about how she “realized” she was black and how it changed her life. Beginning her story as a naive child living in Eatonville, Florida, she speaks with distinct …show more content…
It is written from a little girl’s perspective, conveying a memory when her family and friends gathered in a local store to root on the “brown bomber” in his boxing match. His victory was much bigger than his title, it began the path of proving the negro culture was just as adequate as any white folk. If Joe Louis lost his fight “we were back in slavery and beyond help.” Angelou makes the story less about her and more about a body of people, “her race” and what they are overcoming (metaphorically) by the victory of Louis. The story is set in a convenient store that is packed full of people gathered around a radio intrigued by the hosts speaking a play by play of the boxing match. The tension in the room is tangible and the stakes are high. The “brown bomber” and the white boxer fight, hitting each other back and forth and there is hardly any change in the plot. The story is impersonal, still the piece is well written using a lot of hyperbole to describe her idea of the short story. Even though they won, they still hadn’t over come and were afraid of the white …show more content…
But to Zora Neale Hurston it was more than that. She believed her color was an empowerment not a curse. This could also represent the time period that the narratives were written in. Figurative language and rhetoric devices played a big part in the author’s perception of their life. Angelou tells more of a story than a autobiography, she describes her environment through hyperboles and metaphors. Hurston is big on imagery and the emphasis of colors to further her points and describe her internal
Hurston writes a narrative about how she “realized” she was black and how it changed her life. Beginning her story as a naive child living in Eatonville, Florida, she speaks with distinct …show more content…
It is written from a little girl’s perspective, conveying a memory when her family and friends gathered in a local store to root on the “brown bomber” in his boxing match. His victory was much bigger than his title, it began the path of proving the negro culture was just as adequate as any white folk. If Joe Louis lost his fight “we were back in slavery and beyond help.” Angelou makes the story less about her and more about a body of people, “her race” and what they are overcoming (metaphorically) by the victory of Louis. The story is set in a convenient store that is packed full of people gathered around a radio intrigued by the hosts speaking a play by play of the boxing match. The tension in the room is tangible and the stakes are high. The “brown bomber” and the white boxer fight, hitting each other back and forth and there is hardly any change in the plot. The story is impersonal, still the piece is well written using a lot of hyperbole to describe her idea of the short story. Even though they won, they still hadn’t over come and were afraid of the white …show more content…
But to Zora Neale Hurston it was more than that. She believed her color was an empowerment not a curse. This could also represent the time period that the narratives were written in. Figurative language and rhetoric devices played a big part in the author’s perception of their life. Angelou tells more of a story than a autobiography, she describes her environment through hyperboles and metaphors. Hurston is big on imagery and the emphasis of colors to further her points and describe her internal