Dance For Me By Amina Gautier

In Amina Gautier’s “Dance for Me” an African-American adolescent girl, that attends a private school in New York, changes her personality in order to fit into society. The girl is the narrator; her name is never mentioned clearly. First, she starts describing uniforms from different schools, and also how girls from other schools are classified. One day, she is in the bathroom trying to roll her skirt like the other girls in the school when a white girl called Heather starts to talk to her and asks her to show a famous dance called the Running Man. Weeks later, many different girls request her to teach the dance, and she never rejects because she is becoming “popular” among the girls. Consequently, Heather sponsors the girl to have a membership in parties hosted by private day schools, which allows the girl to attend a party that Heather invites her to.

During the party, the girl is disappointed about how bored the party is. The girl describes how all the white girls are dancing the Running Man dance that she taught them, but nobody asks her to dance. When the girls are at the sleepover, Heather invites a boy called Gae. The girl ends kissing Gae, and saying, “I saw how much of me would change; I saw the girl I would become. And I decided to go ahead and miss myself right now, knowing that the girl I would become wouldn't know how to appreciate me at all” (187). Therefore, Gautier’s short story “Dance for Me” expresses the idea that people should not change themselves to fit into society by showing how the protagonist changes her way of look, starts to act against her will, and loses her