Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to be Colored Me”, was an interesting text to me. Hurston’s title, when I first read it, made me think that she was going to talk about how terrible life was for colored and black people according to her experiences. To my surprise, her stance on the matter was a breath of fresh air. Her views on slavery and how she decided to view the world was amazing to me. She stated:
“The terrible struggle that made me an American out of potential slave said “Go!” The Reconstruction said “Get set!”; and the generation before said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”
She refused to allow the past hurts due to slavery to hold her back and keep picking at it like an open wound. For Hurston, slavery was, “Sixty years in the past.’ The fact that she was, ‘the granddaughter of slaves”, was not going to become a constant handicap for her. She was not going to apologize for who or what she is as a colored woman but she also was not going to harp on the past either.
Hurston stated, “It fails to register depression with me.” I believe her mindset towards the issues she faced as a colored woman was a good one. Self loathing, depression, and pains of the past would not cloud her future. That was one of the main reasons I was drawn to this essay. I took away from it the idea of constantly moving forward and ignoring those things that cause emotions of pity, pain, and anger.
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