How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Neale Hurston

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A LITERATURE CLASS ON THE WORKS OF ZORA NEALE One of the most memorable classes I had today was the literature class which was focused on Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me". The class was taught by Miss Tushabe, who was incredibly knowledgeable about Hurston's work and was able to bring the text to life for us. The main point of the class was to understand the personal experiences of Hurston, as a Black woman in America during the 1920s and 1930s, and how she used the essay to express her sense of self and identity. To support this central point, Miss Tushabe used a variety of different types of details. One of the most memorable was the use of facts. She shared with us some facts about Hurston's life, such as that she was born in 1891 in a small town in Florida, and that she grew up in a community of Black people who …show more content…

Miss Tushabe presented us with statistics that helped us understand the racial climate of the time. For example, she showed us that in 1920, only 3% of the African American population in the United States lived in the North, while the vast majority lived in the South. This helped us understand the challenges and experiences of Hurston as a Black woman in the South during this period. Also, Miss Tushabe used quotations from the text to help us understand Hurston's message. For example, Hurston writes in the essay "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." This quote helped us understand Hurston's experience of feeling different and her sense of self in relation to the white majority around her. Lastly, she also used anecdotes from Hurston's life to help us understand her personal experiences. For example, she talked about how Hurston moved to New York City in the 1920s and how she felt like an outsider in the city. This anecdote helped us understand how Hurston's experiences in New York City influenced her writing and her sense of