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Judith Butler
Zora Neale Hurston was an African American author most famous for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Known mostly for her fiction, Hurston was also a respected filmmaker and anthropologist. What’s more, she wrote a fair amount of nonfiction, including the essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me,” in which she observes, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” Rankine takes this idea and applies it to her examination of what it means to be “hypervisible” as a black person surrounded by white people.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes in Citizen: An American Lyric
The Citizen: An American Lyric quotes below are all either spoken by Zora Neale Hurston or refer to Zora Neale Hurston. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background."
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Citizen: An American Lyric LitChart as a printable PDF.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes in Citizen: An American Lyric
The Citizen: An American Lyric quotes below are all either spoken by Zora Neale Hurston or refer to Zora Neale Hurston. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background."
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
