Zora Neale Hurston's How It Feels To Be Colored Me

While Zora Neale Hurston associates race with identity in her essay, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” Gloria Anzaldúa similarly relates language to identity as well in her essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” In Hurston’s situation, because she’s black, she is forced to succumb to society’s views and standards on African Americans; growing up, she never realized her race was treated differently until she moved to a new town. Segregation was occurring at the time, and throughout her essay, she comes to terms with the realization that being black is a part of her identity. Correspondingly, Anzaldúa realizes that her language is also a part of her identity when she is forced to forfeit her native tongue to accommodate English speakers rather than them having them accommodate her. Although both authors have gone through

She goes on throughout her life without really making the connection that blacks were treated differently from whites given the time period she grew up in. Hurston writes that “white people differed from colored to [her] only in that they rode through town and never lived there” (Hurston 4). As a young girl, the only difference between blacks and whites to Hurston was that white people never lived in her town; otherwise, they were the same to her. Because of this, Hurston never struggled with her identity for she was accepted by the people of her town; the people of color, and she was known as “their Zora.” Once she moved to a new town, she realized she was different, and she was “now a little colored girl” (Hurston 5). Anzaldúa, on the other hand, struggles with the discrimination against her Chicano culture and language. Throughout her essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she talks about how the languages she speaks are all variant forms of a combination of multiple languages; however, they form the foundation of her culture and her identity. It is