Identity in James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” and Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me”
Everyone has a story, a past experience that has built them up to be the person
that they are today. In both James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” and Zora Neale
Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me” the presence of conflicting views in their
stories holds a large impact on how they later develop as individuals. While Baldwin’s piece demonstrates the ignorance from society which is projected onto him from Swiss villagers, it shares both similarities and differences to the attitudes demonstrated in Hurston’s piece influenced by her surroundings. Being that it is difficult to escape the past and the events that have brought strength through triumph, it is important to focus one’s attention on the present and into the future. Although the past determines who an individual is, the future determines who an individual will become.
James Baldwin holds the ability to push through negative affiliations in order to
reach self establishment. As demonstrated in “Stranger in the Village,” Baldwin is simply just a black man who “was motivated by the need to establish an identity” (196). Through his desire of recognition as a human being rather than as an object, Baldwin is willing to look past the ignorance of the Swiss villagers and focus on defining himself. Greeted by the children’s calls of “Neger! Neger!,” Baldwin unintentionally finds himself reminiscing (191). Although the children’s label is not meant in a derogatory fashion, it causes Baldwin to surrender to the racial indifference of his past. Baldwin attempts to disregard his unpleasant reflection and justify the fact that change has been made. ...
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...experiences and refocus his or
her energy toward the future, however, through the works of both James Baldwin and
Zora Neale Hurston, it is shown to be possible. Through their experiences they worked to
develop their identities, and through the present they looked toward the future in order
to reach establishment. It is true that everyone has a story; however, it is up to each
individual to take that story and make it his or her own by creating an identity for him or
herself.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Stranger in the Village.” The Norton Reader. Ed. Linda H. Peterson
and John C. Brereton. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2004. 360-68.
Hurston, Zora N. ""How It Feels to Be Colored Me." Grammar and Composition -
Homepage of About Grammar and Composition. Web. 08 Dec. 2009.
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Hurston’s juxtaposition of the dreams of men in contrast to the dreams of women is signified by the movement from concrete imagery to abstractions. She describes men’s dreams as cargo on a ship which is at the mercy of the tide, while women’s dreams are likened to memory, which can be controlled. Her deliberate choice to contrast the way that men and women dream affects the reader by immediately raising the issue of the differences of perception between the two genders. The purpose of this comparison is to immediately prompt the reader to realize a fundamental difference between men and women by using imagery they can relate to. The difference is also one of the novels thematic concerns: women are proud and defiant, they can control their wills and chase their dreams while men never really reach for their dreams. This is symbolized by men’s dreams on a ship; dreams for men either come to them or leave them, like a ship. A ship is
James Baldwin left Harlem and fled to Paris in 1948 to escape uneasy relations including difficulty with his stepfather, financial distress, and problems discovering his sexual identity (Roberts). He escapes to the ?Swiss village? to advance his writing career and, furthermore, find himself as a person....
Reuben, Paul P. PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. Chapter 10: James Baldwin (1924-1987). 3 November 2011. April 2012 .
Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
Ethnic group is a settled mannerism for many people during their lives. Both Zora Neale Hurston, author of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me; and Brent Staples, author of “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” realize that their life will be influenced when they are black; however, they take it in pace and don’t reside on it. They grew up in different places which make their form differently; however, in the end, It does not matter to them as they both find ways to match the different sexes and still have productivity in their lives.. Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, a quiet black town with only white passer-by from time-to-time, while Staples grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, surrounded by gang activity from the beginning. Both Hurston and Staples share similar and contrasting views about the effect of the color of their
Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
When identifying the common theme of Baldwin’s short stories “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man”, it is clever to first distinguish the writing style of this creative author. Baldwin was a famous writer of his period because of the way he interpreted reality into a story. Around this point in America, racial tension and self-identity between cultures were at a peak and sparked many different ideas towards Baldwin’s writings. Baldwin intentionally expresses himself through his writings to create a realistic voice to his audience, making the story easy to capture a visual of. In one story in particular, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” Baldwin creates a novel
In ‘How it feels to be colored me’ Neale Hurston opens up to her pride and identity as an African-American. Hurston uses a wide variety of imagery, diction using figurative language freely with metaphors. Her tone is bordering controversial using local lingo.
Robert E. Morsberger. "James Baldwin." Magill Book Reviews. Salem Press, 1998. eNotes.com. 2006. 4 Dec, 2010
Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1995. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
Authors have been known to use their writing as symbols of other things that are occurring in the world. For George Saunders, in Pastoralia, he writes about characters that reflect real-life workers that are earning a low wage. Through many elements in his story, Saunders shows his audience how the narrator goes through his daily routines in order to provide for himself and his family, how his cave mate tries to provide for her mother and son, and how they aren’t in the best of conditions. Although it seems that this is a different period, it greatly relates to...
Baldwin being visits an unfamiliar place that was mostly populated by white people; they were very interested in the color of his skin. The villagers had never seen a black person before, which makes the villager
In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston breaks from the tradition of her time by rejecting the idea that the African American people should be ashamed or saddened by the color of their skin. She tells other African Americans that they should embrace their color and be proud of who they are. She writes, “[A socialite]…has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges,” and “I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads” (942-943). Whether she feels “colored” or not, she knows she is beautiful and of value. But Hurston writes about a time when she did not always know that she was considered colored.
In Ralph Ellison’s novel The Invisible man, the unknown narrator states “All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was…I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself the question which I, and only I, could answer…my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!” (13). throughout the novel, the search for identity becomes a major aspect for the narrator’s journey to identify who he is in this world. The speaker considers himself to be an “invisible man” but he defines his condition of being invisible due to his race (Kelly). Identity and race becomes an integral part of the novel. The obsession with identity links the narrator with the society he lives in, where race defines the characters in the novel. Society has distinguished the characters in Ellison’s novel between the African and Caucasian and the narrator journey forces him to abandon the identity in which he thought he had to be reborn to gain a new one. Ellison’s depiction of the power struggle between African and Caucasians reveals that identity is constructed to not only by the narrator himself but also the people that attempt to influence. The modernized idea of being “white washed” is evident in the narrator and therefore establishes that identity can be reaffirmed through rebirth, renaming, or changing one’s appearance to gain a new persona despite their race. The novel becomes a biological search for the self due through the American Negroes’ experience (Lillard 833). Through this experience the unknown narrator proves that identity is a necessary part of his life but race c...
element of blackness within Hurston’s story back into the realm of physiology. As such, the