"I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl."
Originally published in 1928, How it Feels to be Colored Me is an autobiographical essay in which the author recounts experiences from her childhood in an all-black community in Eatonville, Florida, and her first experiences of feeling different.
Hurston lived comfortably due to her father being a local Baptist preacher and the mayor of Eatonville, but after the death of her mother when she was just thirteen, Zora was sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she immediately became "colored."
Rather than bow to sorrow or victimhood, Hurston transforms these experiences into a celebration of individuality, resilience, and joy, encouraging us not to focus on race, but on self-awareness and the similarities we all have in common. Writing with humour and an unapologetic sense of self, Hurston invites us to see identity not as a burden but as a source of power.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an influential American writer and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Eatonville, Florida—one of the first all‑Black incorporated towns in the United States—she grew up surrounded by Black autonomy and culture, a foundation that shaped her literary voice.
Her most celebrated novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), is now considered a classic of American literature, praised for its lyrical prose and powerful portrayal of Black womanhood. Though her work was underappreciated during her lifetime, Hurston's legacy was revived in the 1970s and she is now recognised as one of the most original and vital voices in 20th‑century literature.
