The real power here lies in Hurston's refusal to grant her oppressors the satisfaction of predictable outrage—she replaces anger with something more unsettling: wonder at human smallness. Most of us assume discrimination should ignite fury, and indeed it should, but Hurston suggests that astonishment might be the sharper response, the one that keeps you thinking rather than burning. When a colleague dismisses your work in a meeting because of who you are, that initial flash of bewilderment—*how is this still happening?*—can be more clarifying than rage, because it doesn't cloud your judgment about what comes next.