How It Feels to Be Colored Me

One of the most important essays about the African-American experience in the United States is Zora Neale Hurston's How It Feels To Be Colored Me, originally published in The World Tomorrow in May 1928. Hurston's was an original voice in the first half of the 20th century. As she reflects on her early childhood in an all-black Florida town, and her first experiences in later life feeling "different," Hurston largely focuses on the similarities we all share and on her own self-respect and identity. "Through it all, I remain myself." This short work is part of Applewood's "American Roots" series, tactile mementoes of American passions by some of America's most famous writers and thinkers.