Summary
Narrated in the first person by the essay’s author, Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” opens with Hurston declaring that she is “colored.” Hurston writes that she makes no excuses for identifying as colored. She also makes no claim to ancestry beyond her African-American ancestry, writing that she is “the only Negro in the United States” who doesn’t believe that her maternal grandfather was “an Indian chief.”
Hurston remembers the day she “became colored.” Until she was thirteen, she lived in the town of Eatonville, Florida, which was populated exclusively by Black people. The only white people she knew were those who passed through the town on their way to or from the larger city of Orlando, Florida. Southern whites rode dusty horses and the tourists from the North drove on the sandy village road in automobiles.
The Black townsfolk of Eatonville were familiar with the local Southern whites and so wouldn’t stop indifferently chewing on pieces of cane when the locals passed. But the Northerners drew people’s attention. The people of Eatonville peered at these white people from behind curtains. More adventurous Black people would go out to the porch to watch the Northerners pass. Hurston writes that the Black residents of Eatonville got as much pleasure out of watching the white tourists as the white tourists got out of their village.
Hurston writes that while the front porch was a daring spot to watch from for the rest of the town, she considered the front porch to be a “gallery seat,” as in a theater. Hurston preferred to sit on top of the gatepost, which she likens to a proscenium box, which holds the closest seats in a theater. Hurston enjoyed “the show” of white tourists passing, and she didn’t mind if “the actors” (i.e. tourists) knew she liked it.
Hurston usually would wave. When they returned her salute, Hurston would say something like, “Howdy-do-well-I-thank-you-where-you-goin’?” Cars or horses would usually pause after she spoke. Following a strange exchange of compliments with the tourists, she would “go a piece of the way with them,” a Floridian phrase meaning she would walk alongside for a bit. If a family member of Hurston’s came outside to see her, the interaction with the tourists would be “rudely broken off.” Hurston writes that she was the first “welcome-to-our-state” Floridian; she hopes the Miami Chamber of Commerce will take notice of her work welcoming tourists.
In the period, Hurston believed the only difference between white people and colored people was that white people rode through town and never lived in Eatonville. She writes that the white people like to hear her say things and sing and dance. They gave her silver dimes for her performances, which was strange to her because she wanted to perform so much; in truth, she would have needed to be paid if someone wanted her to stop.
Other African-Americans of Eatonville didn’t give her dimes because they disapproved of her joyful tendencies. Nonetheless, she was their Zora. Hurston writes that she belonged to them, to the nearby hotels, and to the country. She was everybody’s Zora.
Analysis
Zora Neale Hurston opens “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by establishing the tongue-in-cheek tone she uses for much of the essay. In a long, run-on sentence, Hurston declares that she is “colored.” The term is now antiquated, but in 1928, when the essay was published, it was a common term to describe African Americans. In a joking, somewhat mocking way, Hurston elaborates on her Black identity by stating that she makes no claim to having any Native American ancestry, as she seems to suggest many other colored people do.
Having established the essay’s subject matter—being “colored”—and boldly introducing her authoritative, sarcastic, and charming voice, Hurston complicates the idea of being colored by saying she remembers the day she “became colored.” The idea that someone can “become” colored rather than always having been colored is crucial to the essay’s thematic concern with race as a social construct.
Before she became colored, Hurston lived in the all-Black town of Eatonville, which was the first town in America successfully established by freed former slaves. In an all-Black community, Hurston as a child was oblivious to how white Americans would see her as “colored” and see her through the lens of their prejudices.
Most of the white people Hurston interacted with were the Northern tourists who drove through her town in cars. Introducing the theme of racialized public spaces, Hurston details how the Black residents would watch the white tourists from the safety of their homes or on their porches, while the white tourists would watch back from the safety of their automobiles. The racial divide was stark, but the young Hurston would have been unaware of how the older Black residents understood—for some in living memory—how white people either enslaved them or were the beneficiaries of slavery.
Hurston saw no reason to fear the white tourists and so would watch from her gatepost. Using metaphors to compare the porch to “gallery” seats at a theater and the gatepost to the “proscenium box” next to the stage, Hurston introduces the theme of performance. Initially viewing the white tourists as the actors she is watching in a performance, Hurston herself becomes the spectacle, singing and dancing for the tourists. They pay her dimes, assuming that she is entertaining for money, but in fact she performs out of an inherent joyfulness. In an instance of situational irony, Hurston says that someone would have to pay her to stop.
