How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Neale Hurston

Decades of Discrimination
Though How to Tame a Wild Tongue was published in the late 80?s by Gloria Anzaldua, it can relate to the theme of discrimination against identity in the 1920?s narrative, How It Feels to Be Colored Me, by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston and Anzaldua are both teaching the audience not be ashamed of their identity. Both authors share their struggles of discrimination they encounter due to the fact that they are not like everyone else. Hurston describes the struggle using her skin tone, and Anzaldua describes the struggle using her native language.
Both authors teach the audience how not be ashamed of their identity. For example, Zara Neale Hurston, author of How It Feels to Be Colored Me, writes ?No, I do not weep at

the world?I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.? As she writes this, she is telling us that the world looks down on people like her, but she does not complain or worry about it. She is too busy finding the good inside her. When she says ?weep?, she is showing us that she is crying. When she says ?world?, she is talking about society. When she says ?oyster knife? she is talking about the pearl inside of an oyster. Hurston write this to show us that this relates to life in a way that, even if people look down on you for being different, do not cry about it, just focus on the good you have inside you. Gloria Anzaldua, author of How to Tame a Wild Tongue, uses a similar writing in describing how she accepts her identity. She states, ?I will have my voice. My woman?s voice, my sexual voice, my poets voice.? During this, she is talking about how she will not feel ashamed of her native language, even though others do not believe she should speak that way if she lives in America. She will stand up for who she is and who she was born to be. When Anzaldua says ?voice? she is talking about her language and her opinion. When she says ?woman?s voice? she is talking about her politeness. When she says ?poet?s voice? she is talking about the writing she does in her poets. This quote is important to the text in a way where we should not feel like we need to hid because we may speak a different language. It shows us that we need to stand up and accept ourselves and not let anyone be able to take away our pride in that.
In both of these narratives, the authors describe how they each had different ways they did not fit in.

These narratives are different in a way that they are both outcast, just in different ways. Hurston is different because of her natural skin tone, and Anzaldua is different because of the language she was born speaking. Though both of these have contrasting sections, they both share the same theme. In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Hurston writes, ?Among the thousands of white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon.? She says this when she is talking about how she really stands out in a crowd of white people, but she still acts herself. When she says ?thousands? she is talking about a crowd. ?White persons? has to do with a crowd of people who are Caucasian. ?Dark rock surged upon? relates to a rock being pushed around by a gush of wind. This quote is important because it tells us that when she does feel colored, it?s around a crowd of white people pushing around her, like a rock being pushed around by wind, and it shows that she is an outcast in a crowd. In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Anzaldua writes, ?We?re going to have to do something about your tongue.? This quote the author is speaking about when she is caught speaking her native language, a different language than everyone else, at recess as a little girl. This quote simply says that she is going to have to do something about her native language, because she needs to speak the same language as an American. ?Tongue?

is the fleshy organ in the mouth that produces words and speech. This sentence is very important to the narrative, because it shows how she was ridiculed for speaking a different language as those around her. Both of these quotes show how different these two narratives are because one of them is being ridiculed for their skin color and one is being tortured for their language.
In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Anzaldua is mistreated for having an ?orphan tongue?.

In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, Hurston is mistreated for being colored in a white community. These narratives, though they have their differences, also have their similarities. Both of the things they were discriminated for were free to use. For example, slavery ended sixty years before Hurston wrote her narrative. Slavery was no longer a thing, yet she still experienced hate because of her color. When it comes to Anzaldua and her discrimination with her language, it violates the first amendment. This states that we all freedom of speech. The people in her town could not see how someone who did not speak English as a native language, was able to live in America. Another similarity is that they both stood up for themselves. Anzaldua and Hurston are ridiculed for being different, but they stand up for themselves by showing the community they live in that they are proud of who they were born to

be.
The connection to these narratives shows that discrimination last throughout decades. Whether you are a different race or ethnicity, you have to learn to stand up for yourself. These authors teach that you have good inside you and you do not need to let society tell you differently because you are unique. The connection to these narratives is discrimination against your identity.

Works Cited
Anzald?a, Gloria. ?How to Tame a Wild Tongue.? Borderlands La Frontera. 2nd ed. San
Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Simon Fraser University. n.d. Web. 27 September 2016. PDF file.
Hurston, Zora Neale. ?How it Feels to Be Colored Me.? LHS English Department. 20
March 2013. Web. 27 September 2016. PDF file.