Throughout our lifetimes we will be constantly collecting the building blocks to form the foundation of our authentic self. Alice Walker goes through the trials of losing herself while in the midst of still trying to find herself in the first place. Instead of moving forward and accepting her fate after a tragic mistake, she gets lost in the thoughts that no one will ever love and admire her like they once did. While doing time in prison, Malcolm X discovers that he can pass time by teaching himself to read and write, while at the same time truly educating himself on the great depressions of the world and how they affected the lives of everyone in his community and what he could do to help change their lives for the better, while at the same …show more content…
Sometimes it's our shame, embarrassment, or lack of self-worth that end up helping us build our strongest self. For Mrs. Walker, in "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self", her life is drastically changed when her brother accidentally shoots her in the eye with his air rifle, leaving her blinded and with a mass of scar tissue formed over her eye. Previously thinking of herself as her father's cutest child, she now holds an immense amount of shame towards her new appearance. "Where the BB pellet struck there is a glob of whitish scar tissue, a hideous cataract, on my eye. Now when I stare at people -- my favorite pastime, up to now -- they will stare back." Until her brother offered to get her eye fixed when she was fourteen, Walker had quite the difficult experience in life. She watched her life be uprooted, her grades slipped, and she didn't feel as if she were a whole person any longer. But then she got the cataract removed from her eye, and she transforms into an all-new happier version of her past self, "Now that I raise my head I win the boyfriend of my dreams...Now that I've raised my head classwork comes from my lips faultlessly as Easter speeches did, and I leave high school as Valedictorian, most popular student, and queen…" It isn't until Walker is interviewed for a magazine article about her new book that she is once again humbled by the mere thought of her eye. Thanks to the love of her husband, she is once again reminded that no matter what, she has come to peace with her appearance. To truly come full circle in accepting her authentic self, Walker is faced with one last challenge of her daughter's first glimpse at the distinct differences between her eyes. "Then looking every bit as serious and lawyer like as her father, she says, as if it may just possibly have slipped my attention: Mommy, there's a world in your eye". Within that moment, Walker came to