Page 204 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

from How It Feels to Be Colored Me
Zora Neale Hurston
I remember the very day that I became colored. generously of their small silver for doing these
4 / Identity
Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little things, which seemed strange to me for I wanted
Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is to do them so much that I needed bribing to
exclusively a colored town. The only white stop. Only they didn’t know it. The colored
people I knew passed through the town going to people gave no dimes. They deplored any joyful
or coming from Orlando. The native whites rode tendencies in me, but I was their Zora
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
dusty horses, the Northern tourists chugged nevertheless. I belonged to them, to the nearby
down the sandy village road in automobiles. The hotels, to the county — everybody’s Zora.
town knew the Southerners and never stopped But changes came in the family when I was
cane chewing when they passed. But the thirteen, and I was sent to school in Jacksonville.
Northerners were something else again. They I left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, as
were peered at cautiously from behind curtains Zora. When I disembarked from the river-boat at
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
by the timid. The more venturesome would Jacksonville, she was no more. It seemed that I
come out on the porch to watch them go past had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of
and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists Orange County any more, I was now a little
as the tourists got out of the village. colored girl. I found it out in certain ways. In my
The front porch might seem a daring place heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast
for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat brown — warranted not to rub nor run.
for me. My favorite place was atop the gate-post.
Proscenium box for a born first-nighter. Not only • • •
did I enjoy the show, but I didn’t mind the actors
knowing that I liked it. I usually spoke to them But I am not tragically colored. There is no great 5
in passing. I’d wave at them and when they sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking
behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not
returned my salute, I would say something belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who
like this: “Howdy-do-well-I-thank-you-where- hold that nature somehow has given them a
you-goin’?” Usually automobile or the horse lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all
paused at this, and after a queer exchange of
compliments, I would probably “go a piece of hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish
the way” with them, as we say in farthest Florida. that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the
If one of my family happened to come to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or
less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too
front in time to see me, of course negotiations busy sharpening my oyster knife. . . .
would be rudely broken off. But even so, it is I do not always feel colored. Even now I
clear that I was the first “welcome-to-our-state” often achieve the unconscious Zora of Eatonville
Floridian, and I hope the Miami Chamber of 1
Commerce will please take notice. before the Hegira. I feel most colored when I
During this period, white people differed am thrown against a sharp white background.
For instance at Barnard. “Beside the waters
from colored to me only in that they rode of the Hudson” I feel my race. Among the
through town and never lived there. They liked
to hear me “speak pieces” and sing and wanted 1 Journey to escape danger. Specifically, Muhammad’s departure
to see me dance the parse-me-la, and gave me from Mecca in 622 C.E. to escape an assassination plot. — Eds.
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