Malcolm X Literacy Behind Bars Analysis

Malcolm X was a man who was best known for his leadership positions in various human rights activist groups and his advocating for Pan-Africanism. What most people don’t know about him was how he got there; his struggles on learning how to read and write are described to us in the excerpt from “Literacy behind bars”. Malcom X speaks about his time at Charlestown Prison and how an inmate, Bimbi, was the one who really fueled his desire to better himself through the pursuit of education. From an early time in his imprisonment he picked up a dictionary and word by word began to transcribe it onto his on pads from the commissary. Through his perseverance in learning new words his whole world was opened up as he began reading and, most importantly, fully understanding what he was reading about. Once he gained the knowledge to see the world around him in a different way his newfound love for literature paved the way to one of the most memorable black activist in American History.

Early in my life, there was a time where I struggled greatly with my education; there are times in life where we can feel lost when it comes to education or in our careers and it really is acceptable to feel this way. Malcolm X’s story really shows how we can always continue to improve on

the skills we already know and how we can always learn new skills. In the summer transitioning from second to third grade, my parents moved the whole family to the United States from Puerto Rico. I went from a strictly Spanish-speaking Catholic school to the great public school system of Tallahassee, Fla. I struggled greatly during this time because I was basically getting thrown into a cold pool without the knowledge of learning how to swim, simple things that would be taught in 3rd grade were unknown to me. Verbs, Adverbs, Pronouns, Predicates; to this day I still do not know what these terms directly mean due to the fact that I never had that solid base for learning these literary terms.
While I didn’t copy a whole dictionary like Malcolm X did, every day in class I would carry around my dictionary and constantly flip through it just to get through the day. I remember having to write simple paragraphs and I would have my trusty dictionary with me to improve my writing. I would read it over and over again until I had a full understanding of new words that I could use in my writing, much like Malcolm X. The highlight of my week eventually came to be when my English teacher, Mrs. Riley, would assign us twenty vocabulary words to take home, study and later use in a short story of our liking. With my trusty dictionary, those short stories were the best in the class, I distinctly remember the word “ominous” which is an adjective used to describe something threatening or if something bad was about to occur. I wrote a whole page story on a little lost duckling in the ominous looking woods.
Malcolm X said in his excerpt that, “At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room”.

This is actually how it felt when I would stay up until 12 am on school nights reading Captain Underpants or making it impossible to sleep by reading multiple volumes of Goosebumps. I used to completely pass my time reading little simple books like these and in return they would fill my mind with vast opportunities to allow my imagination to flourish and apply it in class. When I first picked up the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling it was comparable to when the first people proved that the world wasn’t flat, that’s how amazing it felt to be able to fully understand and talk about the books with my

classmates.
I’ve always thought that learning the English language was comparable to a stepping stone into the rest of my education. Taking the time to learn the English language led me to better grasp the concepts being taught to me in my Science, Math, and Technology classes and through that my love for school really found a home. I was finally able to ask questions to feed my curiosity and more importantly I was able to answer the questions being asked to me in class. I was finally able to participate in my classes and not be the, “new kid from Puerto Rico”.
“As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive,” said Malcolm X. Personally, I can directly relate to the way Malcolm X felt when he finally was enlightened. The success I had in mastering the English language had a greater influence on my life than I had realized when I was ten years old. Looking back at it now my whole attitude towards school changed as I learned more and more about the English language. In the first few months in the United States I truly hated attending school every day, it got the point that my mother would actually have to pick me up out of the bed and I had to attend a therapist to be able to cope with the fact that, “No, we’re not going back to Abuela’s house anytime soon”. Of course, as time went on I started to gain friends and started to lose the dictionary in my everyday life.
There is one more important thing that improved both my ability to cope with moving to the States and with my attitude towards school. Once I had made some friends, a couple of them began talking to me about this game called, “Runescape”. Runescape is a very basic game that can be played on a browser and allows you to play with your friends, go on quests, and kill creatures for rewards. The most important thing about this game though, was the simple fact that to get any rewarding task finished, you had to be able to communicate with your teammates. Failure to communicate with your team would result in defeat. I was practically forced to communicate effectively with them. This had downsides as well though, I learned a lot of lingo instead of actual educational English, but what really mattered to me was the fact that I was able to communicate with my classmates.
I can appreciate and I am proud of myself for all the work that I made myself do when I was younger to facilitate the work I would have to do now in school. It feels amazing to more knowledge of the English language than some of the people in my classes who were born in the United States and are not bilingual. X said, “You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man. . .”. While I don’t take it to that extent, I do try to make it a habit to read a few pages of a book which I read for pleasure and some time for schoolwork every night. In a way, becoming more in tune with how I improved myself when I was younger, has led to better study habits. I’ve never been a procrastinator for the simple fact that if I get a paper or an assignment done early I can always go back to it and improve it on the spot if an idea crosses my mind.
After reading Malcolm X’s excerpt from his auto biography, you can really tell the difference between someone who goes the extra mile and does the little things to better themselves and people who waste the gift of knowledge offered to them. Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right”. Through hard work and determination anyone is capable of accomplishing their goals for the better, but you have to work hard at it if you want it. Much like X, I was lost in what seemed to me like a prison when my parents moved us to the United States, but through perseverance I was able to achieve just like him. Education is key to unlocking our full potential, through hard work and determination, anyone is capable of accomplishing their goals.