Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" could be viewed in four parts: Zora at home, Zora as the ancestor of slaves, Zora and the music, Zora and the bags. Each of these parts contains an anecdote or an extended metaphor through which Hurston can explore her conceptions of race and identity. This rhetorical strategy, in part, is done to appeal to and develop a rapport with the reader. "Zora at home" refers...
Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" could be viewed in four parts: Zora at home, Zora as the ancestor of slaves, Zora and the music, Zora and the bags. Each of these parts contains an anecdote or an extended metaphor through which Hurston can explore her conceptions of race and identity. This rhetorical strategy, in part, is done to appeal to and develop a rapport with the reader. "Zora at home" refers to Hurston's recount of her life in Eatonville when she did not feel colored. She calls herself "everybody's Zora" who danced and sang for passersby on her front porch. But then she moves to Jacksonville and experiences discrimination and that's when she begins to feel "colored." The essay then moves into the historical context of racism, and Hurston argues that she refuses to wallow in the memories of the past. Then Hurston poses herself at a jazz club where her experience of the music is so unlike the experience of the white person with whom she attends. She describes her experience using "jungle" imagery. Finally, Hurston develops the extended metaphor of the colored bags to represent the essentially human nature of us all, no matter what race we are.
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