Language In Malcolm X's 'A Homemade Education'

Language and Its Significance In spite of the many different complexities of languages, dead or alive, they are critical in allowing the majority of us to communicate. As Malcolm X was stated in his, "A Homemade Education" essay, gaining literacy skills was his emancipation as it allowed for him to transform into the powerful speaker and civil rights activist that he was. Furthermore, language is simply more than the spoken word, as shown by Helen Keller, who explains in an excerpt from her book, "A Word For Everything", that even a deaf and blind person, like her, can communicate their ideas like everyone else. What these authors accomplish is the use of language in ways others may not have realized was possible and as such, enlightens

However, as someone who is bilingual, I see that people also feel freedom when they can express themselves through the languages they speak. After first immigrating to the United States, I consequently needed to learn English, especially for school, and as a result, my identity shifted; I no longer felt so proud of my heritage as I strived to 'fit in'. While others face a language barrier as they struggle to pick up the most commonly spoken language, I faced the opposite, letting go of my native tongue. This also made me think about Helen Keller who described in her book how learning sign language was a blessing to her. It was because of that that she was able to communicate to others in the way saying it was "the key to all language [...] [and she was] eager to use it" (Keller 146).What she meant by this was that

Helen Keller was a delusion before she met and learned from Anne Sullivan, her teacher. In the beginning, she had no idea “what the future held of marvel or surprise for [her]” (Keller 145). Due to her blindness and deafness, she did not have a formal way of communicating with others, and she merely just “guessed vaguely” of other people signs (Keller 145). When she first began learning how to spell in sign language, she had difficulty confounding between words and understanding that everything has a name. Later on, Keller slowly realizes that “children who hear acquire language without any particular effort,” while she was deaf and trapped “by a slow and often painful process” (146-147). Keller went to a long process of accepting and realizing that she was different than other people amongst her and that her experience with language would be immensely different from others. Furthermore, before beginning his experience with the language, Malcolm X wrote letters to people with authority and power, such as the Mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts. Although he believed that he was the “most articulate hustler” and “commanded attention when he said something,” Malcolm X lacked writing skills and claimed that when he tried to “write in simple English, [he] not only