My favorite passage in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is this:
"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." What strikes me is the tone. Many victims of oppression dwell on the pain they feel. Here, Hurston turns the tables. She practically feels sorry for the people doing the discriminating. How refreshing.
What is your favorite passage from the piece, and why?
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My favorite passage is from the ending of her story. I read it 3 times and that part seem to stick to me.
ReplyDelete"At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty?Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads."
I like this passage because it says that she is who she is no matter what race.She is proud of who she is and does not let anything get in her head to change the way she is.
As long as we are discussing displacement right now, I feel the following passage is Zora's description concerning her displacement: "I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieve the unconscious Zora of Eatonville before the Hegira. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
ReplyDeleteI think it is sad that Zora not only had to deal with living in a new place but had ramifications due to her color.
In the story "How it feels to be colored me," it seems that Zora is overly proud to be african american throughout the whole story. She makes a statement in the passage saying ;
ReplyDelete" Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you."
Zora is expressing in this passage that people are always reminds her that she is black. But she feels that she needs to inform them that, yes she knows, and yes she understands, but that it was over 60 years ago and that this is a new era and that she is okay.
I felt that this was a very strongly expressed passage, and that when I read it I felt that Zora was just flustered and wanted to let everyone know how she felt.
I also think that moving to a new place caused Zora to feel uncomfortable, and "displaced."
I love these lines from Zora Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." "I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong." I can completely feel the sense of the American Spirit running through her. Even though she is colored she knows the feeling of living in the land of the free. She knew her dreams will be given just she knew it would be a challenge. I mean I don't support racism, but it is something that happened in our history and there is nothing we can do about nor shall we try. America is built on working to succeed and thats what she represented by this set of lines. That is my response about this because I like it because she shows her American pride. I believe in that and I show my American spirit everyday. There is always tomorrow!
ReplyDelete"No, I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
ReplyDeleteI like how she words this passage because she is comparing it to another statement that many people have heard before. I find her writings to be a wide arrangement of help how she says this passage.
"I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my asegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww!"
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I just connected with this sentence. I love the action of all the words, yet it is all within herself, I feel like that constantly. I feel these crazy amounts of emotions that feel they are tearing me apart and then get angry when no one notices but then I realize that I've kept it all inside.
My favorite piece from this selection was the sentence "the native whites rode dusty horses, the northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles."
ReplyDeleteI liked this sentence because it shows other people that some people are poor and can't afford automobles. Other people from other places can afford the automobiles and it puts outher people in the dust. I dont think that it is right that the tourists come into town and show off the green cash.
I quite agree with the professor on this one...after reading the passage what he had chose was my favorite passage too!! It was really the only part of the passage that really stood out to me. I just thought it was very intriguing to see a woman of this time talking the way she did about herself in this manner (and she was African American.) I actually found it rather humorous and I think that it shows that she had a good attitude towards people in general (including white people) and I think that this not seen often in African Americans of this time.
ReplyDeleteThe passage that I had found most interesting is "Sometimes, I feel dicriminated 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.
ReplyDeleteI like how she makes a joke out of the fact she is discriminated against for being colored. Usually, when a colored person is being discriminated against for their race, they tend to get angry. But she doesn't she gets astonished.
My favorite passage is "At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty?Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads." I like this passage because it says that she is proud of who she is. She is proud of her race and the color of her skin. She is proud of where she has come from and know one can take that away from her.
ReplyDeleteI also like the title of the essay, "How It Feels to Be Color Me." This is still something that many people struggle with. How they feel to be the color or race that they are. I know that i am a very light complected person and sometimes i don't like being so light, but that just who i am.I also know that I'm not the only one that feels this way or there wouldn't be tanning booths. ;). And there are people that love the color of their own skin like, Zora Neale Hurston, she proud to be who she is.
"The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat for me."
ReplyDeletethis is my favorite passage from the reading because it reminds of a zoo. instead of people walking through and looking at the animals in their cages, its people that are the exhibit. the ones watching the "exhibit" are more like the animals because they are caged with their own fear and cant go out in the open to look at the "exhibit". back to the zoo analogy, the ones with more courage would walk up to the exhibit and get close to the "exhibit" and would be risking some things. like the guy at the zoo who got attacked by the tiger who was in a cage, i can imagine one of the passer bys to just attack one of them like the tiger attacked that guy.
mind you i just woke up so some of this myt not make any sence at all.
The passage that i found most interesting was ' I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. '
ReplyDeleteI like this passage because i believe that what she is trying to say is being clearly stated and i agree with her completely. Also, through the words that she uses, she is able to clearly and strongly express how she feels at this point about striving towards the future and not looking back to the past. I can relate with what she is saying in this passage becasue i believe that this is something that all people should live by and i agree with her, because striving for success and not looking back to the past becasue there are things everyone wishes they could forget. But the past is the past and it has happened already and you cant change it so live with it.
I liked the passage concerning her American citizenship. she states "I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries." I think that there are so many problems that she brings up about racism, but she still is proud to be an American and has no hate for our country.
ReplyDelete