Zora Neale Hurston Essay

"I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored" (360).

"I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored" (360).She explains that if the racial roles were reversed, and blacks discriminated against whites, the outcome is the same for a white person’s experience amongst black people.In her final paragraph, she compares herself to a brown paper bag filled with random bits, just as everyone around her is a different colored paper bag filled with small bits and pieces that make each unique.

She mentions her experience at a jazz club with a white friend, where through the music she expresses the racial difference and distance between their lives.

She concludes her essay acknowledging the difference but refuses the idea of separation.

Although, Wright criticized Hurston for falsifying information and the perspective of black living even though Hurston presented social problems in her writing.

Hurston and Wright both wrote about the importance of self-identity.

Similar to Hurston’s parallelism of life and her life in "How It Feels To Be Colored Me", Walker’s writings were influenced by her own experiences.

Walker not only rediscovered Hurston’s works, but revisited the era of the Harlem Renaissance.

illustrating her circumstance as an African-American woman in the early 20th century in America.

Most of Hurston's work involved her "Negro" characterization that were so true to reality, that she was known as an excellent anthropologist, "As an anthropologist and as an African-American writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston was uniquely situated to explore the critical possibilities of marginality." Coming from an all- black community in Eatonville, Florida, she lived comfortably due to her father holding high titles, John Hurston was a local Baptist preacher and the mayor of Eatonville.

Some scholars claim that "Hurston belonged to the Depression-era group of black writers that also included Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright".

Similarly, to other black writers in this era, Hurston used her writings to expose the living conditions of black people, not only to black readers, but white readers.