I can’t help but think of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself, 51” when reading Hurston’s “How It Feels to be Colored Me”. There is a level of self-awareness that is not only profound, but assertive. Another piece that comes to mind is “Do Not Stand at My Gave and Weep”, by Mary Elizabeth Frye. What these three pieces have in common is their absolute certainty of self. There is no hesitation, no bargaining. Every author is adamant about their identity and refuses to budge. What that means for Hurston is not giving up her sense of self to a label. While she recognizes that it is an inherent part of her, she will not simplify her identity to being “just black”. Hurston is “a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall”, full of “a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless” (Hurston). In fact, we all are, according to her.
Despite her rejection of the label, Hurston is not actively denying her blackness. She embraces it. But embracing it for her means something entirely different than it does for another author like Du Bois.
“No, I do not weep at the world–I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
Hurston recognizes the strides that society has made before, and in, her time. She does not lament over the cruel past, but rather uses it as a starting ground for her progress. Whether that progress is personal, or that of her generation, she doesn’t specify. But she’s using it to her advantage nonetheless. There has never been “a greater chance for glory” in her mind, because there’s nothing to lose. When you start at the bottom, you can only progress upwards. She will use her blackness as both a springboard and tool to achieve greatness.
The assertiveness of her complexity, as previously stated, heavily resonates with “Song of Myself 51”. In it, Whitman acknowledges that parts of himself might contradict one another, but that’s okay. It’s just who he is, and he will not change that. If the “miscellany”, as Hurston calls it, that makes him up doesn’t make sense, it’s just as well. Hurston speaks in a similar vein. Again, she is not separating herself from her blackness, but is determined to let us know that it is not the only thing that makes her up. From the little girl in Eatonville to “the cosmic Zora”, she too, contains multitudes.
As a queer person, all this resonates with me. Often you forget you are othered, that you are different. You very much view yourself as “a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall”. You are the sum of your parts rather than one piece at a time. But at the same time, when you are aware of how society views you, you’re determined to use it to your advantage. Hurston perfectly captures the feeling of having a complex sense of self as an oppressed individual. Often quoted in the queer community is Frye’s poem, usually in the context of former states of identity.
“Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.”
Similar to Hurston’s experience, we are not denying who we were or are. We recognize the disconnect from those parts of ourselves but embrace it all the same, because it’s a part of our “multitudes”. We did not die when we came into ourselves. We have always been who we are. We may get lost in the intricacies of identity, but that should not erase our complexity. And, in Hurston’s words, “When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.”.
