How It Feels To Be Colored Me

The New World Cabaret is a space associated with African identity in the New World, especially African-American identity. Hurston’s description of listening to jazz in the New World Cabaret is the only extended reference to Africa in the essay. The New World Cabaret is also one of the few desegregated spaces highlighted in the essay. The New World Cabaret serves as a symbol of Hurston’s imagined connection to her African heritage and of the sense of cultural separation between blacks and whites.

Hurston closes the essay with an extended metaphor that imagines people as differently-colored bags filled with an assortment of junk and precious or beautiful items like colored glass or jewels. The image of the bags with interchangeable contents is used to reinforce Hurston’s sense that racial identity is not a reflection of some essence within each race. Instead, much of what is associated with a particular race is the result of randomness. Hurston’s reference to God as “the Great Stuffer of Bags” (par. 17, line 8) may also mean that there is something universal about human experience that transcends race.

The portion of Seventh Avenue that runs through Harlem was known for the important theaters, churches, clubs, and other significant sites and events associated with African-American culture. Hurston’s recounting of promenading down Seventh Avenue emphasizes both her assumption of the importance of African-American culture but also her feeling that, having accepted the importance of African-American culture, she can transcend being constrained by it. Hurston also feels most connected to the feminine aspects of her identity while on Seventh Avenue, so the street represents the gendered aspects of her identity.