How It Feels To Be Colored Me

A metaphor is defined as the implied comparison of two unlike things. Hurston uses metaphors in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” to communicate the reality of her sense of identity to readers.

Hurston first uses metaphors to describe herself and her attitude towards the world outside of Eatonville, particularly whites. When she describes seeking out encounters with tourists coming through Eatonville, she uses an extended metaphor drawn from the world of the theater. In this metaphor, the front porch—located at a distance from the tourists on the road—is an inferior seat to the gatepost, a “[p]roscenium box”—a seat right beside the stage—that allows her to have aclose view of whites, whom she imagines as actors (par. 3, lines 2-3).

In this metaphor, whites are there for Hurston’s entertainment, a reversal from the usual perception of blacks as objects of entertainment or observation for whites. Hurston reverses the metaphor in the next paragraph when she describes the tourists as paying for her performances. Her puzzlement over their decision to pay her for things she enjoys emphasizes that as a child, she understood herself to be on equal footing with whites. The theatrical metaphors also emphasize Hurston’s sense that racial identity is a kind of performance, instead of being a biological essence.