"Me and My Shadow" / 264

Some of the earlier pieces in WRA touch on sharing personal voice in public spaces. Annie Neeposh Iserhoff's "Excerpts from My Life" and Gloria Steinem's "Ruth's Song" are two good examples. This is one of the central focuses of Jane Tompkins' work as well.

In "Me and My Shadow," Tompkins writes a critical essay, but also shares her personal views about her critical essay (all in the same piece). She tries to define what "personal" might be in literary criticism. She says "there are two voices inside me answering, answering to, Ellen's essay. One is the voice of a critic [and] the other is the voice of a person who wants to write about her feelings (I have wanted to do this for a long time but have felt too embarrassed)" (266). Let's speak personally for a moment. Can you do this? Can you combine critical thinking and personal thinking? We've been told not to, usually, haven't we? Or maybe we've been told that some kinds of essays you can use "I," and some kinds you can't. Hmm. Wait a second. Let's look at this introduction to Jane Tompkins. It is both "academic" and "personal," isn't it? Let's get back to some more academic-type stuff.

For Tompkins, writing is a personal act. And you grow, personally. It doesn't matter if you're writing for a public audience: You grow, personally. You may also grow professionally, of course. And this has other repercussions too. Daniel Mahala and Jody Swilky point this out in a 1996 issue of the Journal of Advanced Composition:

Speaking personally, then, broadens and compli-cates the critical attitudes writers exercise as scholars. The personal inevitably, as Tompkins' exploration of this concept demonstrates, draws women writers to speak about fascinations, curiosities, confusions and aversions, which have attended their inscriptions of themselves as professionals. Thus, to articulate the personal is to write the self reflexively, as an historical subject who tells stories from lived experience, yet also draws on ways of reasoning, arguing and writing that empower her as a professional. (http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/16.3/Articles/2.htm)

Another review in the Journal of Advanced Composition by a highly reputable scholar, Susan Jarratt, is available about Jane Tompkins' approach: http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/15.2/ReaderResponse/1.htm. The critical readings offered provide additional perspectives.