Short Passage of "How It Feels to be Colored Me"

In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, Zora Hurston is talking about her experiences, and how it makes her feel to be someone of color. She talks about the difference of being a colored person in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida versus being someone of color in Jacksonville, Florida. At home in Eatonville she says that they rarely see white people, and when she does see them they are just passing by in automobiles. She says the only difference she can see between herself and a white person is that the white people ride through town, and she actually lives there. When sent off to Jacksonville for school she realizes that she is no longer just Zora from Eatonville, Florida. She is now just a little colored girl. She expresses emotions vividly when listening to the music with a white counterpart. She gets emotionally wrapped up in the music, and it makes her feel fierce and savage. While the white person shows no emotion to her, he just says “that’s good music”. She feels like the white person only heard what she felt. Then she goes on to talk about how its time where she feels she doesn’t belong to any race, she just feels like herself. Specifically when she talks about walking down Seventh Avenue with her hat tipped a certain way. She is probably in her own zone and is just tuning out everything. From this passage I understand that she is accepting her black culture and ancestors, but she is not going to let it stand in her way. She is not going to dwell on the fact that her ancestors were slaves. Zora feels that slavery is the price we payed for civilization. She thinks it was a terrible and harsh time period, but she feels like it was worth it.