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"How It Feels to Be Colored Me"

Reading strategies, such as SOAPSTone, help you actively participate in your reading. Try using various strategies in all of your courses to help you stay on task.

Remember, SOAPSTone stands for:

  • Speaker
  • Occasion
  • Audience
  • Purpose
  • Subject
  • Tone

SOAPSTone: Speaker

Speaker: "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is a nonfiction essay; it is written in first person point of view. The speaker is Zora Neale Hurston. You can tell by the author's use of first person pronouns, "I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief."

SOAPSTone: Occasion

Occasion: The text was published in 1928 during the Harlem Renaissance. She uses a metaphor to connect jazz to her subject.

"For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number."

SOAPSTone: Audience

Audience: Hurston's audience is geared towards other American citizens and the public in general.

SOAPSTone: Purpose

Purpose: The overall purpose of "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is to explain how good Hurston feels about herself regardless of the color of her skin.

SOAPSTone: Subject

Subject: Hurston discusses what it means to be "colored," and she provides several metaphors to serve as examples:

  • "I am colored"
  • "never stopped cane chewing when they passed"
  • "it was a gallery seat for me"

SOAPSTone: Tone

Tone: The overall tone of the essay is reflective and positive. Words and phrases such as the ones listed below help to reveal the tone of the essay:

  • "...as much pleasure out of the tourists"
  • "my favorite place"
  • "gave me generously of their small silver"
  • "there is no great sorrow"

Drawing Conclusions

Let's draw conclusions about the reading selection. What are some details from the story "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"?

1. Zora likes to entertain the white visitors, but other black people "never stopped cane chewing when they passed."

2. When Zora leaves Eatonville, she realizes that others see her as no more than a "colored" girl, "I remember the very day that I became colored."

3. Zora doesn't let others' perception of her get her down.

4. Although she is constantly reminded of slaverym Zora believes that slavery is in the past. She is ready to move on and enjoy life.

5. Zora doesn't focus on race; she believes she is beautiful just as she is.

What conclusion can you draw?