Summary
“Changes” come to Hurston’s family when she is thirteen (i.e. her mother dies and her father remarries). Hurston’s father sends Hurston to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. Hurston left Eatonville “a Zora,” but when she steps off the riverboat in Jacksonville, she was a Zora “no more.”
Hurston writes that she seemed to have suffered a "sea change"—a profound transformation. No longer Zora of Orange Country, Hurston is “a little colored girl.” She discovers her identity as colored both as a feeling in her heart and as a recognition in the mirror when she sees the permanent brown of her skin.
Hurston states that she is not “tragically colored.” She does not have a great sorrow dammed up in her soul or lurking behind her eyes. She does not mind at all that she is Black. She writes that she does not “belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood” who believe that nature has given them an unfair deal and whose feelings are mostly dedicated to dwelling on the unfairness of their lives.
Hurston writes that even though her life can be a “helter-skelter skirmish” of difficulty, she sees the world as belonging to the strong, no matter the hue of a person’s skin pigmentation. She says she does not weep at the world because she is “too busy sharpening [her] oyster knife”—i.e. preparing herself to feast on the world’s opportunities.
Hurston says that there is always someone nearby who reminds her that she is the granddaughter of slaves, but the fact does not make her depressed. Hurston says that slavery is sixty years in the past, and that “the operation was successful and the patient is doing well.”
Hurston uses a metaphor for track racing to state that historical movements before her put her on the starting line. The fight for emancipation that made her an American and not a potential slave, coupled with the efforts of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the generation that came before her, made it so she is off to a flying start. Hurston says she must not halt her progress on the running track to look behind and weep.
Hurston says that “slavery is the price [she] paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me.” She states that her ancestors have paid for her life and that sacrifice was worth it. Hurston says that no one on the planet ever had a greater chance at glory than her; she has the world to win and nothing to lose. She says it is thrilling to know that any act of hers will receive twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is exciting for her “to hold the center of the national stage” when spectators do not know whether to laugh and cry.
Analysis
Hurston’s innocent childhood ends when “changes” come to her family. Although she skips over the details in the essay, Hurston is alluding to her mother dying and her father, a Baptist preacher, marrying a woman with whom it is rumored he had a relationship prior to Hurston’s mother’s death.
Sent at thirteen to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, Hurston “becomes colored” when she finds herself in a majority-white context. In the racialized public spaces of Jacksonville, she loses her unique Eatonville identity and is merely seen and treated as “a little colored girl.” From this age, Hurston understands herself as a Black person in a society that is socially divided by ethnicities; previously, she understood herself simply as “Zora.”
Despite the sincere and grave tone with which Hurston addresses her “sea change” of becoming colored and losing her former identity, Hurston is quick to undermine the reader’s expectation of where the argument is headed. Although it may seem that she resents the racial categorization she first experienced in Jacksonville, Hurston states that she is not “tragically colored.” Introducing the theme of rejection of victimhood, Hurston declares her embrace of her Black identity. She dismisses the idea that she has a great sorrow dammed up in her soul or lurking behind her eyes, rejecting racist stereotypes that projected tragicness onto African Americans.
Rather than view her descent as something that makes her a victim of circumstance, Hurston seeks to set herself apart from “the sobbing school of Negrohood” who, in her opinion, focus too much of their lives on the injustices Black Americans face. In one of the more controversial points in her essay, Hurston uses her sarcastic and dismissive tone to reject solidarity with these fellow Black Americans, preferring to identify with “the strong” who, regardless of race, make the most of life and excel. Hurston uses the metaphor of “sharpening [her] oyster knife” to declare her ambition to thrive and to take advantage of all of life’s opportunities.
Continuing with the theme of rejection of victimhood, Hurston presents more controversial views by refusing to accept that slavery has negatively affected her life. Hurston acknowledges that her own grandparents were slaves, but she sees the sixty years that have passed since abolition as having been long enough for her to thrive as a free citizen. Employing more of her characteristic metaphors, Hurston describes the struggle for emancipation, Reconstruction, and the efforts of her parents as factors that put her at the starting line of a race. She is now ready to win that race, and is off to a flying start. Looking back on slavery, she states, would only slow down her forward progress. She also doesn’t mind the added scrutiny she faces as a Black person, because she finds the attention and the heightened stakes of failure or success “thrilling.”
