Compare And Contrast Zora Hurston And Amy Tan

Tan shows that she is embarrassed in her family for their lacking of proper American manners. Although at the time she felt ashamed, the words spoken by her mother, “Inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” became better understood later in life. In Amy Tan's work, the strong use of description of both the event that are occurring and Amy’s feelings about them, draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are part of the action. Tan's Chinese-American culture and life stories are imprinted in her writing which gives the reader an opportunity to gain knowledge about the way of life in her family, friends, and even the Chinese culture. Tan's main purpose of writing is to inform and educate people about growing up as a minority in the American society.

Human life is not an open book. No one can predict every page, but instead, the thriller novel is written as it happens because characters in every story are dominated by their complex traits. For example, who can truly say that one who is laughing is purely happy or actually concealing sorrow? Contradictions exist everywhere in life and literature attempts to grasp and portray them in human characters to create complex traits. Being a black woman forced to undergo three marriages in a stubborn, male-dominated, and oblivious American society right after the civil war, Janie Crawford is a complex character full of confidence and self-reliance, but also with a weakness and desire of finding true love which forces her to become submissive. Zora

Allison Joseph and Sekou Sundiata are both great writers who engage the world by expressing their struggles through poetry. Both authors write about how people make assumptions because of what they hear and see around them. Their poems discuss the altercations and obstacles they have faced only because of the color of their skin. In the poem “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person,” Joseph incorporates a wide breath of experiences from her point of view. She expresses her strong emotion by using descriptive language which allows us to read with emotion. In “Blink your eyes,” Sundiata shows the intensity of his feelings by using the repetition of phrases and reinforcing the poems irony.

Realizing the quality of an individual varies depending on the environment they are in. This relates to Zora Neale Hurston in her article, “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” She states, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” Hurston does this to convey her ideal message in her article, which is being proud of her race and deterring the racial remarks forced on her even after being put in an environment making her further aware of her color. This statement fuels and is central to her argument by turning her living situation into a sarcastic analogy, as well as using the tool of imagery to help her argument. In turn this simplifies her emotional feelings and transition between locations to allow the audience to

On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was born in the tiny town of Notasulga, Alabama. She was the fifth of eight children in the Hurston household. Her father John was a carpenter, sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher; and her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Within a year of Zora's birth, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida; a town, which held historical significance as the first, incorporated Black municipality in the United States.

Zora Neale Hurston never experienced the life of slavery but, she struggle with being defined by race. Almost a century after the life of Sojourner Truth, Hurston lived during the era of reconstruction, and the high times of the roaring twenties. Post slavery meant, “How does it feel to live in the land where your grandparents where slaves.” Hurston demonstrates her frustrations in, “How it feels to be colored me.” Like most innocent children, Hurston never experienced prejudice or categorized people based on color until, she moved to the city for school. She just saw herself as Zora. The frustration of moving to the city only

Zora Neale Hurston uses much repetition of sentences, descriptive imagery, colloquialism, and shifts in diction. It shows the difference between Sawley and its people and the Suwannee River. It also talks about euphony, alliteration, and other types of figurative language.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston demonstrates the theme through pride of her skin color. Hurston says “I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored.” (Hurston). She does not feel that the color of her skin makes her less American or sets her apart. “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” (Hurston). This is another example of Hurston believing that her skin color does not separate her from others. She only feels different when others point it out. “BUT I AM NOT tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.” (Hurston). Hurston says

Although ashamed of her language, she embraces her identity. She exhibits is by using testimonies, a statement that has been said by a person in the work. Tan uses anecdotes to expresses her attitude and tells her readers how she is embarrassed about her mother's language. The anecdotes what she uses helps the audience be able to relate easier.

As an adult, Tan understands that her mother’s English is the language of intimacy. She now understands that her “mother’s expressive command belies how much she actually understands” Her mother reads “The Wall street Journal” and converses with their stockbroker on matters Tan doesn’t comprehend. It becomes evident that her initial

Life experiences often tend to influence thoughts, actions and behavior. It can be seen through poem, criticism or even fictional works. Something as simple as a drawing from a young kid can be influenced by their young years of life to be drawn on a page. Although the experiences can be explained more through literary devices as most authors do to effectively convey to the reader. As in the the case of Zora Neale Hurston's, “How it feels to be colored,” she uses literary devices and personal experiences to show a prideful identify as an African American.

In our life, not all people speak the English language speak it the same way. A language can be subdivided into any number of dialects which each vary in some way from the parent English language. "Mother Tongue," is the article based on the power of language; In her essay Mother Tongue, Amy Tan wrote some anecdotes of her mother and the influence of her mother's limited English on her early development, expressing her understanding of mother tongue. The evidence suggests that there are three messages conveyed in this essay, which is that mother tongue helped her understand her mother step by step, find her culture root and then achieve a balance between American culture and Chinese culture, and shape her thinking system.

I have chosen “Mother Tongue” for the subject of my essay. I chose this essay because Amy Tan has a unique writing style which has tone that is clear and identifiable. Tan makes her arguments in a way that is easily understood. While her tone is sometimes humorous and captivating, it still clarifies some serious issues. These qualities among others leave Tan’s work to be desired by almost any reader because her tone and style are both genuine and upfront. This essay will talk about how Tan’s work in her essay “Mother Tongue” uses several different styles and tones to make her point of regarding the differences of her communications with her

As a young child growing up in Eatonville, FL. Zora never really had to worry about her race, she was always confident in who she was, that’s was until she turned 13yrs old and moved to Jacksonville, FL for school, she encountered a obstacle she never had before, that obstacle was racism. Five years from now the story I will remember the most is Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” this story is such a stand out and really drew me in because of the conflict regarding race that she faces when reaching her teen years, and the connections from Zora’s life then, until my life on present day.

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the greatest authors in the Harlem Renaissance era, and it saddened me to discover that she died before seizing the benefits of her literary work of arts. Ms. Hurston was often criticized for her substantial use of southern country dialect and folk dialogue; she was a master at creating realistic African-American works of fiction. Hurston’s style of narrative is divided into direct and indirect dialogue. In her writing, she would employ a third-person narrative voice that was vastly intelligent with scholarly techniques such as formal grammar, rich vocabulary, vivid imagery, and allegories to define her settings, locations, and portrayals. Contrariwise, in the same piece, she would display a narrative voice in first-person and third-person using slang language, informal grammar, and irregular speech patterns. Through Hurston’s fictitious creations it enables us to appreciate how significant linguistic choices are used to enrich the production of contemporary literature and how different dualistic styles of narrative can work together in depicting the narration within that story.