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

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?

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