Engl 240 wk2 discussion board text memoir malcolm x excerpt

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Reading selection: “Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm

MALCOLM X

Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful

leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he

spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah

Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X

emerged as the leading spokesman for black separatism, a philosophy that urged black

Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the white community. After a

pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an orthodox Muslim,

adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the teachings of

the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his

autobiography (1965), coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm

X describes his self-education.

It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some

kind of a homemade education.

I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in

letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most

articulate hustler out there. I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to

write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional. How would I sound

writing in slang, the way 1 would say it, something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat

about a cat, Elijah Muhammad—”

Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read

something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is

due entirely to my prison studies.

It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy

of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I

had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain

anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I

just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I

had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty

soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some

words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was

sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a

dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized

so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some

kind of action, I began copying.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed

on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on

the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize

that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in

the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant.

I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first

page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-

tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its

tongue as an anteater does for ants.

I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same

experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and

places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally

the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the

way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so

much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and

writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick

up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has

read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then

until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was

reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr.

Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my

reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to

then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

The Norfolk Prison Colony’s library was in the school building. A variety of classes was

taught there by instructors who came from such places as Harvard and Boston universities. The

weekly debates between inmate teams were also held in the school building. You would be

astonished to know how worked up convict debaters and audiences would get over subjects like

“Should Babies Be Fed Milk?”

Available on the prison library’s shelves were books on just about every general subject.

Much of the big private collection that Parkhurst had willed to the prison was still in crates and

boxes in the back of the library—thousands of old books. Some of them looked ancient: covers

faded; old-time parchment-looking binding. Parkhurst, I’ve mentioned, seemed to have been

principally interested in history and religion. He had the money and the special interest to have a

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Reading selection: “Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X MALCOLM X Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his autobiography (1965), coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm X describes his self-education. It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a homemade education. I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to ...
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