Week 4

Malcolm X

In his article Learning to Read, Malcolm X attempts to explain that just because you didn’t go to school to get an education doesn’t mean that you can’t learn and become successful. He argues if you have to right tools, meaning books to read from, you can accomplish quite a bit through a little dedication. He explains his story on how he became able to read and understand a text just by being in prison.

 

I am able to make a connection between this article and the Brandt article because both authors speak about learning how to read and write. Brandt explained the term literacy sponsor which is a person, or thing in Malcolm X’s case, that teaches you a specific kind of language. Malcolm X did not have a strong vocabulary nor could he write very well. He found that he could make use of his time in prison to learn the proper English language instead of slang words. He became interested in the topic of his history, African American history. Malcolm’s literacy sponsor was the books he read over that period of time which taught him general language as well as more sophisticated terms. The books and dictionaries and articles were Malcolm X’s literacy sponsors.

 

 I thought this article was very interesting. I wasn’t very familiar with Malcolm X and how he became who he was. This article showed me that you do not have to come from a wealthy or sophisticated white family to be successful. Rather, you can come from any background if you have the proper tools and an immense amount of dedication and interest. I think this is an eye opening article, at least for me, because I think it is amazing to be able to teach yourself to read and write from a dictionary.

 

Alexie

In his article The Joy of Reading and Writing, Sherman Alexie attempts to explain that just because you are labeled as something in society doesn’t mean you should follow along with that label for the rest of your life. He argues that it was hard for him growing up because he was an Indian child and no one expected anything of Indian children. His teachers and classmates didn’t like the way he read and answered questions all the time. He learned to read by admiring his father and he says that no one should take that away from you.

 

I am able to connect this article to the Malcolm X article because both authors talk about how their love of reading and writing developed, although very different stories. Malcolm X had developed his reading and writing skills by copying a dictionary and practicing the words he learned by reading books in prison. He was African American therefore he didn’t have the same education as whites did. In Alexie’s article he explains the difficulty of being an Indian child and how his father loved reading therefore he wanted to love reading as well. Alexie was not expected to do well in school and the other non-Indian people did not like his achievements. Both stories explain the difficulty of being from a minority and the struggle they went through to get where they are today.

 

I believe you have to have an extreme amount of determination to get through the kind of things Alexie and Malcolm went through. It is possible, I believe, to become a leader of your minority if you can read and write because it is a great strength to be able to give speeches to the public. People tend to pay attention to things that aren’t normal in society. Therefore when an individual is believed to be uneducated, society is “amazed” that they can put together a well written speech. This causes people to think differently about that particular minority and maybe change their opinions. Deborah Brandt is helpful in this particular question because Malcolm X and Alexie both had to have at least one literacy sponsor to be successful. The point is that you can’t become successful on your own, you learn from other sources which make you into the person you become.

 

This article was interesting in my opinion because I didn’t realize that Indian children were not “allowed” to be as smart as non-Indian people. This amazed me that when Alexie raised his hand in class to answer a question, he was looked down upon by the other children and the teacher. I also found it interesting that he was considered an oddity not a prodigy just because he was Indian, whereas if he were not Indian he would be a prodigy.