One And The Same

          In both The Secret Life of Bees and How It Feels to Be Colored Me, The Boatwright sisters and Zora Neale Hurston herself are great, driven and optimistic people. Hurston took so much pride in her race and didn't let prejudice and racism get in the way of her dreams. "No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife" (294). The way Hurston writes with such optimism and pride in her heritage is extremely admirable since she wrote that during a time where black's had such limited right's in society. Hurston knew she had a lot to offer to the world and the pigmentation of her skin definitely wasn't going to get in the way of that. This connects to the The Boatwright sisters, especially August in particular. She had that same type of optimism in life. August never let the fact that she was a black in South Carolina get in the way of her dreams. This novel and autobiographical essay both go into the magnificent lives of colored individuals and they feel they're as what Hurston said,"Not tragically colored" (294).
        "I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of things priceless and worthless...A bit of colored glass would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place--who knows?" (297). When I read How It Feels to Be Colored Me, by Zora Neale Hurston, that was my favorite quote in the entire essay. I feel there's so much truth in those short sentences. What Hurston says is similar to what was carved into our country's building in the Declaration of Independence about how, "All men are created equal". But then there was slavery, then the civil war, then the Civil Rights movement. The idea of different colored bags with the same contents was neglected.  No matter how many naive close-minded people believe that skin color can change who a person is, they're all wrong. 
        When you pour out the feeings, thoughts, emotions of all different types of people, we're all the same. We're all just human beings trying to reach our full potential and fulfill our own version of the American Dream in one way or another.  I believe that despite all the differences countries may have together, we feel the same emotions, we strive to be successful, we long to be accepted, we're all the same.