ENG 100-20: Questions for Reflecting and Writing #1 (145-148)

Chayse J. Adams

ENG 100-20
9-7-10

“How it Feels to Be Colored Me” By Zora Neale Hutson

Questions for Reflection and Writing

    I label myself a strong nail that will be pounded as time goes and eventually I will be given the final blow that drives me home. What has happened in my life thus far has put me where I am and what will happen as time goes will make me into the person I am to finally become. I will stay strong and stick upright, and when something happens that bends me over I will straighten myself back out and continue with my journey.

    In Zora Neale Huston’s essay she defines herself as being a colored girl amongst a sea of white. She is not ashamed of herself or her ethnicity. She goes about her business in life and attempts to interact with people, no matter their ethnicity. She is often reminded that she is the granddaughter of slaves but it fails to register depression in her. Slavery was of the past and that if she were a patient of the conflict from that past she would tell the doctor that she was making a swell recovery.

    I feel I can relate to Zora’s response not that I am a patient of a past conflict but when something is to cross my path, it will not discourage me. I will not pity myself and ask why it is that I was delt such an offal hand in life for this to happen to me, I will simply straighten myself up and move on. You cannot change what has happen or why, I will just have to work around my difficulties the best I can to try and succeed in the life I have been given.