...Zora Neale Hurston is a powerful writer of African American literature. Hurston is closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance and influenced many writers during the time period. In 1928, Hurston’s article “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” was published by The World Tomorrow. The essay argues against the typical ideologies of racial segregation. Hurston states that she “do[es] not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood” (“How It Feels…”, 1-2) that requires her to internalize past and present injustices faced by African Americans. Hurston later published another article in 1950 titled “What White Publishers Won’t Print”, where she addresses the lack of interest in society about the lives, emotions, and culture of African Americans. White people find their interest sparked by...
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...The readings that this essay will go over are “Sonny’s Blues” & “How it feels to be Colored Me”; and more specifically, how music is used within the two. Music is something that transcends people’s preconceived notions, cultural differences and personal schemas; and for those reasons can be very beneficial to use as a literary device. While the two short stories have more similarities in how they use music, they are not without their differences. “Sonny’s Blues” and “How it feels to be Colored Me” both use music similarly in that they both use music to convey certain elements, albeit how the authors used music differed in the two works. Music is used similarly between the stories as something used to surpass words when it comes to expressing your inner feelings, as well as something the narrators use to show differences between two characters. In “Sonny’s Blues” music is a focal point of the story as it is exemplifying the difference between the narrator and his brother, as well as being the thing that ends up bringing the two together (Baldwin 148). “How it feels to be Colored Me” uses music in a similar way in that it makes Zora see the differences as well as the emotional distance between herself and her white friend (Hurston 3). While...
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...How It Feels to Be Colored Me Analysis Paragraph Novelist, Zora Neale Hurston, in her narrative essay, How It Feels to Be Colored Me, describes her childhood struggles with identity. Hurston, as a young girl, was known as “Zora of Eatonville”. Eatonville, a predominantly African American town, was a sort of utopia for Hurston. She did not have to face racial issues until she moved to Jacksonville, where Zora changed the way she viewed both Black and White people. Hurston’s purpose in her essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me is to describe a shift in her views on Blacks, Whites, and herself because of her move to Jacksonville. Hurston adopts a sanguine tone in order to persuade her audience that no matter one’s race, all people are made the same....
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...EN105 25 January 2015 Racism For many years African Americans have been discriminated against, not as individuals, but solely because of the color of their skins. In her essay “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”, Zora Hurston relays to the reader that being discriminated due to your color doesn’t take away from who you are as a person, nor does it change the morals and virtues and pride that you have for yourself. Hurston speaks of her life experiences, and through those experiences she has became to know who she was, which at the beginning made her feel ashamed. The author didn’t realize or have ever been truly exposed to racism until the age of thirteen, when she moved from Eatonville, FL., a predominately black community, to Jacksonville, FL. Until then white people only differed to Zora because they didn’t live in her town. There in Jacksonville Zora experienced racism and discrimination; through all of this Zora never felt bitter towards those that discriminated against her. “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood.” (Hurston 266). Though slavery was sixty years in the past, Zora understood that slavery was the price that was paid for civilization by her ancestors. Racism is alive and well. The past year many of us were stunned by the cases of racial intimidation and judicial bias, during the Michael Brown and Eric...
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...How It Feels To Be Colored Me (Interpretation) Where does racism come from? Are we born with discrimination or racism? Is it easier for some to hold back their anger when being discriminated against? How It Feels to BE Colored Me, is a book reflected on racism and discrimination. Hurston goes on to describe how she experiences her life events. She grew up in a small town Eatonville, Florida. At the age of thirteen, she begins a new chapter in her life in a city outside of Eatonville, Florida. From there, she talks about life experiences she encounters and discusses some of her reactions to those encounters. In the beginning of the essay, Hurston talks about her childhood. Her childhood was an easy going one. Hurston grew up in a small town described to be exclusively of only colored people. While living there, she, from time to time, would see what she refers to them as Southerners and Northerners. Right here, she is already distinguishing the difference between her people (Southerners) and the people to the north of them (Northerners). Although she doesn’t know it, she is already beginning to label others. Why? This might be due to the fact that she is a part of a town that is mainly colored people. But the Northerners were something else again. They were peered at cautiously from behind curtains by the timid here (Hurston, 265). She goes into detail on how white people are unknown to her in the city she grew up in. If we were to dissect this sentence, a bigger picture...
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...1. The function of the first paragraph of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in setting the tone of the essay is for Hurston to express her views about being an African American girl in America. Hurston included strong diction in the first paragraph to inform her reader about her opinion of being colored. She also includes humor by using a hyperbole. Hurston says, “... except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.” The author is sort of making fun of her own race and is saying that she is not as special as what other people thought she was. 2. Hurston counters the argument of being colored is a bad thing and that nobody would want to be colored. She says, “But I...
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...“On Coming Home” – Joan Didion In this essay Joan Didion tried to compare and contrast life in the two separate places and realities she called home; The home of her birth and the home of her marriage which are totally different. Didion’s style is mainly that of storytelling. In her attempt to connect her two lives and show how difficult it was to reconnect to the home of her childhood, Didion takes the reader through a roller coster of rhythms. Note how she omits the use of conjunctions between words or phrases to produce a hurried rhythm, at another instance she over used the conjunction “and” in quick succession making the words feel like they are bouncing off the walls, and quickly returns to standard sentence structure to slow the pace. Didion seems to pay attention to details and dates as she described the content of the cupboard she tried to clean out; a bathing suit she wore when she was seventeen, a letter of rejection, three teacups and the 1954 photograph. Her tone mostly conveyed frustration. Frustration about losing and missing the home of her birth, her family, whose ways she had grown so use to; Frustration about the husband who is very much unlike them, unlike her. Frustration about the decay all around; physical and social. This frustration so real, she even spoke about them in the present tense. Interesting as it was, this essay left me totally exhausted and overwhelmed. How It Feels to Be Colored Me – Zora Neale Hurston What an overwhelming relief and...
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...so he can assist in getting rid of Paul Robeson from his function as a black leader. Using a relative analysis of both Robinson and Robeson early lives, Author Ronald Smith affirms that they spearheaded change from different paths. Smith illustrates how Jackie Robinson was willing to cooperate with white society for the purpose of positive racial goals and Paul Robeson wanted improvement own his own terms, not necessarily those suggested by white society. Nonetheless, Smith insists both Robinson and Robeson fought for equal rights in their respected ways. In this informative and well written essay, The Paul Robeson-Jackie Robinson Saga and Political Collision, Ronald A. Smith (following his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, he spent 28 years at Penn State teaching sport history and researching intercollegiate athletics) illustrates how a collision arose between Robinson and Robeson, Significantly because of Robinson’s desegregation of baseball under white terms and Robeson’s stand for human rights under free political terms. This essay takes us through a clashing journey of two outstanding and prominent African American men, who shared core values and beliefs of equality from a different ideology and spectrum. This essay is...
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...The essays on the Declaration of Independence and the Letter from Birmingham jail, are very good persuasive essays, and that if I was alive during those times that I would have agreed with all of the authors. I also believe that these essay still stand today. First let’s start with the Declaration of Independence. In this essay Jefferson uses deductive argument’s that includes the examples on how Great Britain’s doings were wrong. It also gave me a chance to see how exactly why the United Sates broke away from Great Britain. One of the arguments is “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” (Jefferson, pg. 365). That means any legitimate government is created to protect the peoples’ rights such as, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson, pg. 365). Throughout the essay Jefferson shows how Great Britain is not protecting our rights, but how they are interfering with them. For example, he states how the king keeps sending over soldiers and expect the people to house and to feed them. The soldiers were also allowed to break the laws in the colonies and they were not to be punished. Another strong that he made was “deriving their just power from the consent of the governed” (Jefferson, pg. 365). That means any power or authority that a government has is given to them by the consent of the people, but this right like many was abused to. Jefferson also wrote that they have “petitioned for redress” repeatedly, meaning that...
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...Rhetorical Strategies: How They Enhance the Essay Today, rhetorical strategies are ubiquitous. They can be discovered in the latest top box office cinematic movie, the beloved binge-watched television show on Netflix, the aggravating commercials we are forced to sit through, the latest best-selling book, etc. Applying rhetorical strategies helps the writer communicate with ease and fluidity. Rhetoric additionally helps the reader or viewer gain interest while making it pleasurable. All in all, rhetorical strategies are simply ways of effectively and adequately presenting material. In the essays of discussion the effectiveness of how imagery, emotional appeal and tone build the writers credibility and enhance the essay will be discovered. For example, Virginia Woolf uses rhetorical strategies in “The Death of The Moth”. Woolf begins by using imagery effectively throughout her essay by strategically incorporating descriptive details. Woolf encountered this moth in the day time, so she begins her essay by stating, “moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths . . .” (para. 1). This statement spikes wonder; what does that mean? She explains that moths in the day “ . . . do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us” (Woolf para. 1). Her sense of imagery is full of color and expression which helps her credibility in her writing. It truly makes...
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...many women who feel they’re not beautiful. Naomi Wolf’s essay “The Beauty Myth” explores, why women feel they don’t measure up. Meanwhile Helena Maria Viramontes’ short story “Miss Clairol” examines the life of Arlene, who is a product of “The Beauty Myth”. Each author shows the power exerted by beauty ideals over women’s identities and goals, including the anxieties produced in women by these beauty ideals. The basis of Wolf’s essay was to show as time progresses it seems, the standards of physical beauty have grown stronger for women as they gained power in other social arenas. “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us” (120) Women have accomplished so much over the past few decades yet, as you watch television or walk around the city, images of pencil thin women are shown to basically tell you that what you see is beautiful and if you don’t look like that you’re not. Wolf states that women today feel a need to purchase cosmetics to make them feel a sense of beauty, this is actually evident in “Miss Clairol” when Arlene is getting ready for her date, “She has painted her eyebrows so that the two are arched and even, pencil thin and high.” (90) This is showing that something so simple such as eyebrows have to be literally drawn on and have a specific width for Arlen to feel beautiful. Today’s society seems backwards to me, it’s ironic how these so called...
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...Birmingham. From his prison cell, King replied not only to the ministers' letter but also to an educated, white, middle-class audience, by writing his response in the margins of the newspaper and on toilet paper . "I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was well timed in the view of those who have not suffered from the disease of segregation," King, wrote in what was later published as the essay, Letter from Birmingham Jail. The 6500 word letter went on to explain and make clear to the clergy and to the world why the struggle against racism must not be deferred. King's main claim in this letter is that no matter what the circumstances are it is far beyond time for the black community to stand up and fight for what is rightfully theirs, the same rights and freedoms accorded to the white community. King effectively accomplishes this task through the structure of the essay and in his use of pathos, ethos, and logos to defend his arguments. King's structure of the essay is purposeful in its attempt to sway the audience into his way of thinking. King begins the essay by clarifying why he is in Birmingham to begin with. Secondly, King describes his direct action campaign, for this is why he is being attacked, his "unruly" behavior. He then explains to the reader that this campaign may involve breaking laws, but they are laws that should not be in place to begin with. Next King appeals to the...
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...specific culture. In her "How It Feels To Be Colored Me", Hurston speaks about the culture of the Americans and the African Americans. She mentions how people believe that these cultures differ, yet she thinks otherwise. In her Size 6 : The Western Women's Harem, Mernissi believes that men dictate all the judgments surrounding what women's size should be. In her Excerpt from On Seeing England for the First Time, Kincaid displays her own biases towards English culture because she is originally from Antigua. Hurston speaks about how white Americans believe that they and African Americans are different, yet she believes that they're the same. She does have her doubts however, for example when she was in the bar and saw a white person, she noticed the difference between herself and him. "He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored" (197). She speaks of the cultural biases that are placed on her and her family because she is of color. She states, "at certain times I have no race, I am me"(197). She states this to oppose what other people think about white Americans and African Americans. She says that she has no race and is only herself, to show that she is nothing more than a human. She also emphasizes that she only feels American, neither white or black. "I have no separate feelings about being an American citizen and colored"(197). To make a point that African Americans and white Americans are not different, she states that she doesn't feel a difference between blacks...
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...Brooke Baker Soc 202 Beauty Essay Is Beauty Really in the Eye of the Beholder No matter what I do not think beauty is ever going to be a fair topic to discuss. I have always heard beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what is beauty. I looked on google.com and found the definition of beauty to be a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. In the reading given to us from Psychology Today, we are told beauty is unobtainable. The author talks about the aspect of beauty being about the body shape, hair color, and if someone is aesthetically pleasing to look at. Are these things something of truth or is it all a fake world we live in? I feel as though every person feels a little bit different about beauty and what it is and how to maintain it, but since we have a set standard for unattainable beauty no person will ever compare. Beauty is said in the article to be unobtainable. Unobtainable beauty is a set shape our body has to be. Everyone can relate to the struggle of wanting our bodies to be to the unobtainable standard of beauty. Along with the shape comes color. I am sure any one can agree that it is a well known thought and belief that if you are tan or have a darker skin complexion you are more attractive in turn making you more beautiful. A tall dark skinny male or female is much more aesthetically pleasing to the eye than a chubby pale red haired person. We have ...
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...Each essay we have read so far stay focused on what they are trying to get across to the reader. I can’t say that I have always understood their writer’s focus. For example in Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels”, it seems my perception of what she was focused on was not the same as what the instructor was trying to get me to see. These readings are not black and white so you have to use some creative thinking to understand them and it is apparent my creative thinking is out in left field. This has shown me that I really need to work on this area, I can write all I want but if I can’t understand what someone else has wrote that is going to hinder me not only in this class but future classes and outside of school. Development plays into the above, for example; as the writer changes from describing a weasel to using the weasel as an object to try and get an underlying message across the reader has to be able to analyze this in order to develop their own opinion of what the writer is trying to convey. It is the writer’s ability to persuade the reader to believe in their thesis....
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