"beauty when the other dancer is the self" -Alice Walker

I found "Beauty when the other dancer is the Self," by Alice Walker to be very interesting. I enjoyed her writing style, and the amount of detail that she is able to put into her memories. It made her overall message much more clear, because she was able to tie everything in together at the end. Another thing I found interesting is that Walker wrote the entire piece in the present tense. Instead of saying "When I was eight years old, I was a tomboy," she writes "I am eight years old and a tomboy." I think this puts the readers in the mindset of picturing the memory as kind of a flashback rather than a story. The first flashback describes how she felt before her brother accidently shot her in the eye, and how confident and sure she feels of herself. For example although she was very young, when her father was deciding who to bring to the fair with him, she knew she would be chosen, and tells her father "Take me, Daddy, I'm the prettiest!" In the flashbacks that follow the "accident," she feels unsure of herself and ends of focusing on the negative things around her, rather than being her old positive self. She looses confidence because of the white scar tissue on her face. She says how she wouldn't look up at anyone because of "the hideous scar. Later on she asks her family if she changed after the accident and they tell her no. However, she disagrees. This is because she lost confidence in herself, and until the scar tissue was removed, she did not regain that confidence. She felt that others were looking at it when really the only one who cared was her. Until she has her first child, she does not realize that she has nothing to be ashamed of. Her 3 year old daughter comments on how amazing the blind eye is, and how it is a world, and beautiful.