How It Feels To Be Colored Me Analysis

Authors frequently use metaphors to explain their identity, or their character’s identity to then make the writing more effective. In the essay “How it Feels to be Colored Me”, written by Zora Neale Hurston, metaphors are used so that she can identify herself as a person, rather than by the color or her skin. Hurston feels as though she is often overlooked, or written off because she is African American. the writing proves otherwise. This is why Hurston uses metaphors effectively to explain her identity to the reader.
Hurston depicts herself as a confident young women through the use of metaphors, while also explaining the proudness she holds for being African American. For example, the quote “But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.”, Hurston explains that she is not longer affected by her family's past as slaves, and that she’d rather forgive
Against the wall in company with other bags, white, red, and yellow.” She describes herself as a brown paper bag because of the color of her skin, in comparison with the other paper bags of different colors, symbolizing other ethnicities or people. This is how Hurston believes the world depicts her, as a brown paper bag or as just another African American woman, rather than a bag or person of different color, who may be “better” than herself. Later, Hurston explains the contents of the bag, “Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless.” meaning that although what is on the outside happens to be different, it does not mean that what is on the inside of the bag, or person, is different as well. This metaphor explains that Hurston sees herself as the same as everyone else, when it comes to the contents on the