Rutgers University

Confirming and Challenging Social Norms An Analysis of Girl and How It Feels To Be Colored Me

Haya Farooqi Professor Santiago English Composition 102 March 6, 2012

Haya Farooqi Professor Santiago English Composition 102 March 6, 2012

Confirming and Challenging Social Norms An Analysis of Girl and How It Feels To Be Colored Me

People go through phases in their lives, trying to find out who they are and where they belong in this world. In the stories How It Feels to Be Colored Me and Girl, we meet two characters who find their identities while growing up in different parts of the world. Zora, a young colored girl, who grew up during the times of segregation and the Harlem Renaissance, uses her pride in being colored as a positive mechanism in finding herself. In the short story Girl, we see a mother teaching her daughter how to behave, cook, and clean because those are the roles on how to properly be a respectable woman. Both stories embrace the concept of race and culture as their thematic content. In Zora Neale Hurstons piece, How It Feels to Be Colored Me, she complicates social norms because of the way she mocks racial expectations while still making herself standout amongst other colored people. Meanwhile, Girl written by Jamaica Kincaid confirms social norms due to the mother-daughter relationship in her story. As a young girl, Zora lived in a predominately colored area of Eatonville, Florida. Having the knowledge of how others lived in her neighborhood, she differed from them. The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat to me (1, Hurston). Already so young, Zora shows signs of bravery and independence, challenging the social norms as a colored person. She never thought that there was a difference between the

whites and the colored until she moved to Jacksonville, where she learned that her skin color did make a difference to others besides her. Although there are constant reminders that make her realize that she is colored, it does not bother her. She does not feel any different as a person and a human. But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feeling are all hurt about it No, I do not weep at the worldI am too busy sharpening my oyster knife (2). Zora, not like other colored people, is very mature about her identity and respects who she is. She mocks the racial expectations in establishing her own conservative person philosophy. Towards the end of Hurstons essay, Zora makes a connection with the brown bag that everyone has many similarities and there may be only a hair of difference that can be ignored. Zoras hair of difference was that she was colored and she was able to ignore that because she looks beyond pride in ones race to pride in ones self. Although Zora does a splendid job of proving to her audience that she can challenge the social norms, she also confirms them because she knows what others expect from her, rather than of her. Throughout her story, Zora tells the readers who she is not. She knows that for other colored people, it would bother them to think about their ancestors as slaves. She acknowledges the fact that others [colored] would fall into deep depressions, whereas to her It fails to register depression with me (2). An example of Zoras language is one that can be put into psychological terms. Due to the fact that she talks about who she is not, actually tells the readers who she is, ethnically. For example, someone who does not live in Newark may think that the

area is terrible or even frightening, whereas a student attending Rutgers Newark or Seton Hall Law School may feel different. One can assume that they live in Newark without even knowing that they attend school there. The complicating of the social norms makes it both easier and harder to define the type of person Zora is whereas in the short story Girl, we have a clear perspective who she is. In Kincaids story Girl, the title explains what the story is about. Kincaid describes a relationship between a mother and her daughter who she wants to grow up with proper priorities. The way the story starts off, Wash the white clothes wash the color clothes turns into a lecture the mother gives to her young girl about how to act and behave like a respectable woman (1, Kincaid). Mothers telling and teaching their little girls how to dress, cook, and clean are all very traditional aspects which confirm social norms. Daughters are influenced by their mothers and how their mothers raise them. Once this girl grows up, she will find her identity through her mother.

Work Cited Hurston, Zora Neale. How It Feels To Be Colored Me. Kincaid, Jamaica. Girl. 1983.