Learning to Read - Malcom X

Overall, I was very impressed after hearing Malcom X's story on how he learned to read and write on his own in PRISON!! I mean wow, who would of thought someone in prison would even think of learning to read and wanting to understand stories. I felt that Malcom X going off on a tangent about black history shows us that he trully did teach himself not only to read the material but actually understand it and relate to it. You can not just read something, you have to truly pay attention and understand it, and that is exactly what Malcom X taught himself to do. "That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary." This quote fascinated me because first of all a person outside of prison probably wouldn't have the drive or time to do this, and secondly, I would never imagine someone in prison to have any drive or motivation to write and learn all the words in the dictionary. "When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about 10 P.M. I would be outraged with the 'lights out'. It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing." I can relate to this because I know how intense books can get and when I am interrupted and can't finish the book, I tend to get pretty mad. Throughout Malcom's biography, he seems to me to get mainly the negative things that people (mainly Europeans) did. He must have had a lot of anger built up and decided to let it out through telling of the horrible things people have done throughout our history. "As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive." This quote was very inspiring for those who do not read very much to read and see what they can get out of it. The main thing this writing taught me is that reading is very important in life and we all can become more mentally alive by knowing how to read.