Precious Collier
English 112
Professor Hill
Essay # 2 Essay
Other can be an individual who can be perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some way. The other may be someone who is a different race, a different social class or even a different origin. Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde and Jamaica Kincaid all share the concept of “other” in their piece of literature whether it’s social, cultural or even political.
In “How it feels to be a Colored Me” Hurston shows “other” from a social aspect because she label “other” imposed by the white society around her. In the society outside of her hometown Eatonville, Hurston will always be labeled “colored” where she agrees with it or not. She was not bitter about her circumstances. She did not mind being colored unlike other people who belong. Like in paragraph 4 when she says “Negrohood who hold the nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are hurt about it”. Also she doesn’t let color define her as a person when she walks the street; she belongs to the human race not a color race. She never dwells on being colored. It does not depress her. She may feel discriminated but that does not affect her as a person. Only when she is in an all-white situation does she feel colored. It is up against the white background of her college experiences when she would look around and see a sea of white faces. She was able to keep her own identity.
In “The Fourth of July” Lorde also show “other” from a social aspect she describes a family vacation her and family took to Washington D.C because her sister Phyllis was graduating from high school but since she was black she was not allowed to go on trip with the rest of her classmates, and also because Lorde was graduating from the 8th grade. Through the experience, Lorde was forced to see the reality of the world and racism blacks face.
