Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self

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Student Name Instructor Name English 101 20 January 2014 Reading Journal 1 The autobiographical essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” is an account of the author’s views of beauty and how an accident at an early age left her disfigured and lacking self-worth. The author recalls her early childhood, growing up with the world looking at her as a cute, beautiful young girl. When she is eight years of age she is accidentally shot in the eye by her older brother with a BB gun. The incident results in her eye forming a large white cataract. From this point on she loses the idea that she is beautiful. Once a confident, bright young girl now rarely looking up from the ground and doing poorly in school. At the age of fourteen she gets eye surgery and the cataract is removed leaving a small blue crater in its place. She struggles with her deformity and inner-beauty roughly twenty-five more years. One day her daughter looks at her eye closely and says, “Mommy, there’s a world in your eye” (Walker 308). It wasn’t until she found the acceptance of her daughter that she finally found her confidence and beauty again, which explains the title. She found the other dancer in herself which finally made her feel whole and beautiful. I really enjoyed this short autobiographical essay for a few reasons. I found the recount quite sad up until the ending. It goes to show that in just seconds one’s life can be dramatically changed. Not only does this recount give examples of how her deformity affected her but also how race, social class and things you do not control contribute to who you become as a person and influence your level of self-worth. There is always good to be found although and you should never think too little of yourself. She explains how when she raised her head up again she became a whole new person: “Now that I've raised my head I win the boyfriend of my

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