Zora Neala Hursa Analysis

To grasp an understanding of the Southern States of America, that is something that Edward L. Ayers argues is hard to achieve :“when they speak of 'Southern culture ' they are creating a fiction, a fiction of a geographically bounded and coherent set of attributes to be set off against a mythical non-South.”1 However, this does not mean that writers of the South can give us a greater understanding of the South. Ayers says that “As The South 's defenders claim, it is not easily understood by outsiders; as its critics claim, it is apparently not understood much better by its resident defenders.”2 This might be the case, however, one can argue that it can be this deviance that can create a better understanding of the South. Zora Neala Hurston 's essay “How it Feels to be Colored Me” is an essay that goes into how it feels to be coloured. Yet, growing up in the South, her views are still deviant to other African Americans of the South such as Richard Wright. It is this deviance that actually shows how society operates and though experiences of the South are different, the main concepts remain the same and actually gives one a greater understanding of how the South operates. Racism is one of the most important elements in understanding the South as the legacy of slavery was still very much present in the early twentieth century. Zora Neale Hurston is one that sees this yet her attitude is one of positivity. In this paper, there will be an analysis of her essay and its