Tony Bambara's Short Story 'I'

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The use of the first voice “I” in writing is usually discouraged in high schools. This is misleading since the pronoun is important in both academic and professional writing (VanderMey et al. 78). English teachers are passing the wrong message to students who grow older only to realize they need the “I” pronoun in their further studies and professions. If they start learning how to use the pronoun “I” earlier in their careers, they will make better writers in the future. There are several instances in the history of writing where the famous writers used the pronoun “I” in their writing. The first instance is indicated by the story How to Tame a Wild Tongue, which was authored by Gloria Anzalua. She uses the personal pronoun to narrate how students with Mexican accent were required to take speech classes just to get rid of their Mexican accent. Mother Tongue, a literary piece written by Tan, is another instance that uses the pronoun “I” in giving an account of how non-English speakers can communicate, even with their poor English. …show more content…

The short story is about a lady, Moore, who decides to offer lessons to some children in her neighborhood. Martin Luther’s, I Have a Dream, was one of the most popular speeches that he presented using a repetition style where the pronoun “I” was largely used. His style became acceptable due to the message that he passed about the African Americans’ who were otherwise discriminated against. In the Cultural Baggage, Barbara Enrenreich uses the “I” pronoun to narrate about how she traced her intellectual lineage. In the short story, Look at Your Fish, Samuel Scudder recounts how he met the famous paleontologist Louis Agazzis at Harvard University. The story uses the “I” to give a personal account of the meeting and the interaction that