In "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," describe how race shapes Hurston's sense of identity.

While race does help to shape Hurston's identity in "How It Feels to be Colored Me," the vision of self offered is not solely defined by it.

Hurston is open about how race has shaped her identity. It is the reason she has gone from "everybody’s Zora" to "colored me." Hurston acknowledges it as a social marker that makes her "the outsider" to the dominant cultural majority. However, she argues that race is not the...

While race does help to shape Hurston's identity in "How It Feels to be Colored Me," the vision of self offered is not solely defined by it.

Hurston is open about how race has shaped her identity. It is the reason she has gone from "everybody’s Zora" to "colored me." Hurston acknowledges it as a social marker that makes her "the outsider" to the dominant cultural majority. However, she argues that race is not the only element that defines her sense of self. Hurston speaks of a personal pride in her identity that can transcend racial definition:

At certain times I have no race. I am me.  When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance... Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company. It's beyond me.

Hurston sees her sense of self moving past being solely racial. While being African-American has helped to define her identity because she knows what it feels like to experience discrimination, Hurston feels that she is more than this. She speaks of an identity that does not capitulate only to racial elements. When she articulates ideas like "the pleasure of my company" or that her pride in self makes her feel as if she "has no race" and is simply "me," it is clear that race is not the only formative piece of her identity.