How It Feels To Be Colored Me Questions

Question: Hurston reports that she “lived in the little town of Eatonville, Florida” until she was how old?

Answer: Thirteenth year

Question: According to Hurston, white people would pass through Eatonville on their way to or from what large Florida city?

Answer: Orlando

Question: Hurston recalls that when greeting travelers as a child her “favorite place” to perch was atop

Answer: Gatepost

Question: Hurston interprets her move from Eatonville to Jacksonville as a personal transformation: from “Zora of Orange County” to

Answer: A little colored girl.

Question: Hurston employs a metaphor to demonstrate that she does not accept the self-pitying role of a victim. What is that metaphor?

Answer: I am too busy sharpening mu oyster knife.

Question: Hurston employs another metaphor to evaluate the effects of slavery (“sixty years in the past”) on her life. What is that metaphor?

Answer: “The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you.”

Question: When Hurston recalls sitting in The New World Cabaret, she introduces the metaphor of a wild animal, which “rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond.” What is she describing with this metaphor?

Answer: Jazz orchestra

Question: According to Hurston, how does her white male companion respond to the music that has affected her so deeply?

Answer: “Good music they have here,” he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.”

Question: Toward the end of the essay, Hurston refers to Peggy Hopkins Joyce, an American actress known in the 1920s for her lavish lifestyle and scandalous affairs. In comparison to Joyce, Hurston says that she herself is

Answer: The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am eternal feminine with its string of beads.

Question: In the final paragraph of the essay, Hurston compares herself to

Answer: Brown bag