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Comparing Learning To Read 'By Malcolm X And One Voice'

818 Words4 Pages

Luna 4 Karen Luna
Professor Rodney Alvarado
English 101
5 February 2018
Knowledge is power
Reading & writing has been around for as long as we can remember. Whether we are reading books, newspaper or even text messages, we practice literacy in our everyday living. My experience with literacy has always been pretty much normal for the most part, of course I struggled here and there but nothing out the ordinary. When I read both short stories “Learning to read” by Malcom X & “One voice” by Susan Madera it brought me back to my journey of literacy. Malcolm X speaks about how literacy influenced his life, while he was self-taught in prison he motivated himself to read and become literate. Susan Madera experience was very different to Malcolm …show more content…

Spanish was my first language and English was my second. Even though I speak English better than Spanish now, I struggled as a young adult. I spoke English but the way I spoke was entirely different from the one my teacher was trying to show me. It was very hard to transition from Spanish to English, I would jam words together or I would even make some up. I know exactly what Susan Madera felt because I had once felt the same. I too had people laugh at the way I spoke due to my poor speech, I could relate to Susan Madera when she said “being bilingual was not a blessing, it was a curse” (Madera 1). I eventually was able to learn and speak the “proper English”. I feel different about being bilingual now. I am fortunate to be able to juggle two different languages. My journey didn’t stop there I still had a lot more to learn, I would soon find out in middle school that it was only the …show more content…

In Malcolm’s X autobiography he mentions he “became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote” (Malcolm X 1). That quote meant a lot to me because I recall a time in middle school where we had to write an essay about our heritage and I wasn’t confident in myself because I felt that I could barely speak the proper English and now I had to convert my thoughts into words. I was only comfortable in expressing my self verbally not in a sentence structure. I was just getting comfortable in speaking in front of my peers, I was definitely overwhelmed. It was embarrassing for me to be struggling with writing, especially since I was born in the U.S. It didn’t take long for my English teacher to notice I was having trouble structuring a simple essay. My teacher strongly recommended to my parents that I enroll into a writing class. Unlike Malcolm X I had the privilege to have a teacher help me write and put my thoughts into words and eventually paragraphs. Malcolm X had to teach himself in prison by writing the dictionary down. The writing classes I took allowed me to expand my mental views, similar to Malcolm X once he learned to

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First, reading and writing might be considered liberating because they open up new perspectives and understandings of the world. In the “Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X states, “Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened” (pg. 1). 2, para. 3. 4.

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Malcolm X was a prominent African American civil rights leader and activist during the late 1900s. Prior to his role as a civil rights trailblazer, Malcolm X was an inarticulate hustler who was sentenced to ten years in prison on burglary charges. It was in prison that Malcolm X had acquired a taste for education and he could not stop yearning for more; as a result, he began to study tirelessly. Throughout “a Homemade Education”, Malcolm X appeals to one’s sense of ethics, logic, and emotion by utilizing his own personal experiences to stress that everyone should educate themselves and thus gather an understanding about the world. When in prison Malcolm X had attempted to emulate a man named Bimbi, a fellow prison mate whom he had looked up

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Malcolm X 's "A Homemade Education" uncovers a story of how he gained knowledge by himself and how it guided his thoughts and ideas in becoming a more knowledgeable speaker. Although Malcolm X is a very outspoken person about racism in the United States and throughout the world, he had the right to be upset but goes a little overboard on blaming whites. The main focus of "A Homemade Education" by Malcolm X is his endless attempt to increase his knowledge by teaching himself how to fully understand different words of the dictionary. Although he was inspired by a fellow inmate when he was in Charlestown Prison, Malcolm, young as he was back then, began reading intensely but couldn’t understand exactly what he was reading because of his writing and reading skills. Starting from being illiterate, Malcolm X used every resource he had to broaden his language abilities and be able to communicate to the world and his people.

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A Homemade Education by Malcolm X, is an informative essay about the author Malcolm X dedication to further his education by himself. In this essay the author talks about how he was envious, how he turned that into motivation, and how he didn't let the fact that being imprisoned would keep him from pursing his goals. The essay " A Homemade Education" was very meaningful. The most meaningful thing to me about this essay was the dedication behind the authors purpose to further his education.

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I was able to complete this article thanks to the help of: Malcolm and Alex Haley X Homemade Education, Helen Keller A Word For Everything, Jimmy Santiago Coming into Language, and Gareth Cook Living with Dyslexia well help us get in more dept with learning how other people conquered the language challenge. In “Homemade Education” Malcolm X claims that the average hustler and criminal was too uneducated to write a letter in his youth. Can you imagine how that would be like in his society or in society today?

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In Malcolm X’s “Learning To Read”, self-education is the main theme in which Malcolm emphasis as his main motivational inspiration for success. Consequently, Malcolm's self-empowerment did not come from school or prison, but from his strong desire for self-expression and motivational encouragement inspired by his inmate friends that he tried to emulate. This evidence is presented in certain passages of the story co-authored by Alex Haley and likewise supports the theory that adult self-learning is a powerful method of education. That in turn initiates a primary root of internal motivation that inspired him like he mentions in the story, “ability to read awoke inside me”(Para. 41)

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Malcolm X, who was born in 1925, was an indigent and moral black African America who sacrificed his life fighting racial discrimination, slavery and oppression of his race. Malcolm’s desire was to free all black people from the government’s fetters. Malcolm X’s self-education made him valiant, courageous and ready to stand in the face of the devil. Moreover, Malcolm connected reading and writing to power and politics of his race and that’s what made him passionate about education, if he were to be alive today, in the era of television and social media, he would’ve also valued books at the same level he valued it in his era.

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In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X uses rhetorical analysis to argue how African Americans continued to struggle in gaining education due to racism. He informs people that through our history books, there have been modifications that restrain the truth about the struggles black people faced. Malcolm X encouraged his audience to strive to get the rights that they deserved. He demonstrates that knowledge is very important because the truth empowers us. In his interview he persuades his audience with diction, tone, pathos, ethos, and appeal to emotion to make his point.

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