Woman of Pride
Zora is a woman with strong self-pride and appreciation of heritage, despite the fact that she is discriminated against because the color of her skin. Growing up in a “blacks only” town in Eatonville, Florida not being able to fully differentiate between whites and blacks, as an adolescent Zora displayed herself as a jester to the white people that would only ride through town traveling to Orlando, she would dance and sing for a few dimes ignoring her family wishes of not talking to the white tourists. At the age of thirteen Zora got a taste of harsh reality. Zora was sent to school in Jacksonville, during a time where racism and oppression were prevailing and ruthless, “I remember the very day that I became colored” (Hurston …show more content…
As Zora becomes an adult living in New York City unlike her childhood views, she now sees a difference between whites and blacks, she gives a descriptive image in a jazz club she visits with her white friends where she finds herself lost in the music. “I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue, my pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know.”(Hurston 11) assuming her white friends felt the music to be as mentally deep as she does, but learning otherwise “He has only heard what I felt” (Hurston 13). This experience made her appreciate her heritage and the advantages of being black, being able to feel and move her body to the music as her ancestors would in Africa. Throughout her life she didn’t let race define her or hold her back, always having great pride in who she was, some would say a nonchalant attitude toward the discrimination she faced “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves of my company? It’s beyond
Zora is a woman with strong self-pride and appreciation of heritage, despite the fact that she is discriminated against because the color of her skin. Growing up in a “blacks only” town in Eatonville, Florida not being able to fully differentiate between whites and blacks, as an adolescent Zora displayed herself as a jester to the white people that would only ride through town traveling to Orlando, she would dance and sing for a few dimes ignoring her family wishes of not talking to the white tourists. At the age of thirteen Zora got a taste of harsh reality. Zora was sent to school in Jacksonville, during a time where racism and oppression were prevailing and ruthless, “I remember the very day that I became colored” (Hurston …show more content…
As Zora becomes an adult living in New York City unlike her childhood views, she now sees a difference between whites and blacks, she gives a descriptive image in a jazz club she visits with her white friends where she finds herself lost in the music. “I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue, my pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know.”(Hurston 11) assuming her white friends felt the music to be as mentally deep as she does, but learning otherwise “He has only heard what I felt” (Hurston 13). This experience made her appreciate her heritage and the advantages of being black, being able to feel and move her body to the music as her ancestors would in Africa. Throughout her life she didn’t let race define her or hold her back, always having great pride in who she was, some would say a nonchalant attitude toward the discrimination she faced “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves of my company? It’s beyond