Role In Culture In Literacy Behind Bars By Malcom X

ROUGH DRAFT

The language you speak or how highly educated you are is a big factor in determining what kind of person they believe you are. Your ethnic background is also a major contribute to the amount of acceptance and your views on society. Having the ability to be well educated gives you the advantage on how to change the views of others and the ethnic group in which you belong, too. Literacy teaches you how to be true to yourself and be able to decide what is best for you. Many of these essays give us their opinions on how literacy changed their lives and gave them the opportunity to prove that they were capable of more than what was expected from them. Literacy has a major role in culture given the fact that a lot of these essays took

Malcom X in my perspective is a person who shows great determination and perseverance because although he was incarcerated, he found the need to educate himself. Society expects inmates to come out the same way they went in, and not be productive citizens. Aside from being incarcerated, Malcom X lived in a time period when African Americans weren’t seen as the most intellectual race group by the nation and he overcame that by making his time in prison useful. It comes to demonstrate that if you truly want to improve your well-being you have to be the one willing to invest yourself. In his essay Malcom X states, “In fact, up to then, I never had been truly free in my life,” (para.9), giving us the understanding that being literate gives you a sense of accomplishment and changes you as a person. Learning to read and write is extremely important in our culture because without it we don’t progress as fast, or as much, like others do. Reading and writing is critical because we get to comprehend more of what is going on in our surroundings and engage in society to help improve others aside from ourselves and the community. Malcom X’s experience teaches us that being literate is power. It is the power to do something beyond of what we think we are capable of doing. It is the power to not let your faith be in the hands of

Society thinks being multi-cultural is a reason why many people aren’t as successful here because they cannot leave behind their old culture and transition to the new one. Gloria Anzaldua, author of: “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” says, “Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself,” explaining that she wanted to be proud that she was Chicana and American at the same time but without the demands of picking either one. Literacy impacted Gloria Anzaldua’s life because she went through the obstacle of whether being true to herself or becoming someone who she was not to please society. In the story, “Blue Collar Brilliance,” by Mike Rose is also a good story that tells us that literacy does not determine our intelligence levels, because for every job there are a certain amount of techniques you need in order to be able to perform well. Although there are occasions when literacy isn’t as important, being well educated is a crucial thing in order to make yourself stand out and be able to navigate through this