FINAL PAPER & COMPLETED PROJECT
Gaiman (1).pdf
Where do you get your ideas? The question authors fear most ... Neil tackles it here. By Neil Gaiman (from neilgaiman.com/FAQs)
Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical
advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession
that must be and then people change the subject fast. And writers are asked where we get our
ideas from.
In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: 'From the Idea-
of-the-Month Club,' I'd say, or 'From a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis,' 'From a dusty old book
full of ideas in my basement,' or even 'From Pete Atkins.' (The last is slightly esoteric, and may
need a little explanation. Pete Atkins is a screenwriter and novelist friend of mine, and we
decided a while ago that when asked, I would say that I got them from him, and he'd say he got
them from me. It seemed to make sense at the time.)
Then I got tired of the not very funny answers, and these days I tell people the truth:
'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'
People don't like this answer. I don't know why not. They look unhappy, as if I'm trying to slip a
fast one past them. As if there's a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I'm not telling them
how it's done.
And of course I'm not. Firstly, I don't know myself where the ideas really come from, what
makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really
wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren't that important.
Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.
Every published writer has had it - the people who come up to you and tell you that they've Got
An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It's such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The
proposal is always the same - they'll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it
into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.
I'm reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for
things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.
The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people
who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of
simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying
to build: making it interesting, making it new.
But still, it's the question people want to know. In my case, they also want to know if I get them
from my dreams. (Answer: no. Dream logic isn't story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you'll see.
Or better yet, tell someone an important dream - 'Well, I was in this house that was also my old
school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but
there was a leaf and I couldn't look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would
happen...' - and watch their eyes glaze over.) And I don't give straight answers. Until recently.
My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her
class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic ('The children have all been making their own books
recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And
lots of little stories. They like the stories.') and in I came.
They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me. 'When I was your
age, people told me not to make things up,' I told them. 'These days, they give me money for it.'
For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.
And eventually one of them asked it.
'Where do you get your ideas?'
And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren't old enough to know any better. And it's a
perfectly reasonable question, if you aren't asked it weekly.
This is what I told them:
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time.
The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is
just, What if...?
(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all
found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't
know who?)
Another important question is, If only...
(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a
button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)
And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If
This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out
the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used
to be ruled by cats?')...
Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats
used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of
the places ideas come from.
An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate
themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.
Sometimes an idea is a person ('There's a boy who wants to know about magic'). Sometimes it's a
place ('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...'). Sometimes it's an
image ('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')
Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before. ('If a
person bitten by a werewolf turns into a wolf what would happen if a goldfish was bitten by a
werewolf? What would happen if a chair was bitten by a werewolf?')
All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your
task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.
And when you've an idea - which is, after all, merely something to hold on to as you begin -
what then?
Well, then you write. You put one word after another until it's finished - whatever it is.
Sometimes it won't work, or not in the way you first imagined. Sometimes it doesn't work at all.
Sometimes you throw it out and start again.
I remember, some years ago, coming up with a perfect idea for a Sandman story. It was about a
succubus who gave writers and artists and songwriters ideas in exchange for some of their lives.
I called it Sex and Violets.
It seemed a straightforward story, and it was only when I came to write it I discovered it was like
trying to hold fine sand: every time I thought I'd got hold of it, it would trickle through my
fingers and vanish.
I wrote at the time:
I've started this story twice, now, and got about half-way through it each time, only to watch it
die on the screen.
Sandman is, occasionally, a horror comic. But nothing I've written for it has ever gotten under
my skin like this story I'm now going to have to wind up abandoning (with the deadline already a
thing of the past). Probably because it cuts so close to home. It's the ideas - and the ability to put
them down on paper, and turn them into stories - that make me a writer. That mean I don't have
to get up early in the morning and sit on a train with people I don't know, going to a job I
despise.
My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think
of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that
hasn't been told before.
Staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Forever.
I wrote my way out of it, though. I got desperate (that's another flip and true answer I give to the
where-do-you-get-your-ideas question. 'Desperation.' It's up there with 'Boredom' and
'Deadlines'. All these answers are true to a point.) and took my own terror, and the core idea, and
crafted a story called Calliope, which explains, I think pretty definitively, where writers get their
ideas from. It's in a book called DREAM COUNTRY. You can read it if you like. And,
somewhere in the writing of that story, I stopped being scared of the ideas going away.
Where do I get my ideas from?
I make them up.
Out of my head.
GayWhereIWrite.pdf
WHERE I WRITE #9: A CABIN ON THE LAKEFRONT
BY ROXANE GAY
May 24th, 2011
I stopped counting when I reached eighteen moves. That was a few moves ago. I am very good at packing my life into boxes. I know: a) how to wrap my breakables and that it is worth investing in the thickly padded dish boxes; b) you cannot transport aerosols or fuels and other flammable substances; c) inevitably something will be missing and something will break; d) you will peel those numbered stickers identifying your belongings on a bill of lading for months, if not years; e) the older you get, the harder it is to uproot yourself from the places and people you’ve grown to love; f) eventually you’ll start to feel like you’re somewhere that reminds you of home. Or you won’t.
My mother has a rule. When you arrive in a new home, unpack immediately. When a mover brought a box into the house, she directed him to where to leave that box and she started unpacking, almost as soon as the box hit the ground. We moved so often it was necessary for her to quickly establish a sense of normalcy and home.
Last summer, I moved to the central plains from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In some ways, I am home. I’ve lived nearly half my life in the Central Midwest, off and on. I finished my doctoral program and moved for a job. Students call me professor and I look around wondering whom they’re talking to. I live in the nicest apartment I’ve ever rented. The last place had a carpeted bathroom and kitchen and no windows. When a stain got into that carpet, there was no getting it out. The bar for niceness in an apartment may not be that high.
The evening after the movers finished unloading my belongings, my mother called. She asked, “Are you done unpacking? Are you home?”
There are few traces of me in this apartment. This is not home. I could walk away.
There is more room in my new apartment than I know what to do with so I occupy very little of it. I don’t know many people here so I write and write and write my way out of my loneliness.
I left someone behind. We are handling the break up terribly—always talking on the phone, e- mailing, telling each other too much truth, seeing other inappropriate people, getting jealous, refusing to let go. There’s a history that justifies this absurdity. That’s what we tell ourselves.
I have a home office where I do not write. It sounds more mature to say home office but really we’re talking about a room with a desk and such. My printer sits on the floor. My mother is appalled. There’s a green filing cabinet with an HRC sticker and a leather pride sticker and a gay pride sticker. My twenties were crazy. A computer I rarely use sits on the desk alongside a pencil cup filled with crap. I think of the cup as a tiny trash can. There are no pictures or corkboard hanging above my desk either at home or in my office on campus. There are no books I might use to inspire me. There are no writing implements for notes. There’s a plastic set of drawers filled with nonsense. I love those discount bins in office supply stores. There are also thirty or so decks of playing cards, and the heavy paper I used to send out cover letters and my vita in the
hopes I would not have to resort to my back up plan upon graduation—moving in with my parents and working at Barnes & Noble. The paper is really nice.
I don’t like writing at a desk. It feels forced, like I’m performing the part of writer.
I am always writing in my head. This sometimes makes people think I’m aloof.
When I was a kid, I wrote on napkins at the kitchen table. I wrote while lying in bed. I wrote on the playground during recess, especially in the middle of this tire jungle gym where I pretended I was invisible. I wrote in church, sneaking a pen in and writing on collection envelopes. I wrote in my closet, balancing my typewriter on my knees, while holding a flashlight between my thighs. We moved a lot but my writing was always home. At boarding school, I wrote down by the water in town, in this nasty little alcove littered with cigarette butts and beer cans. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I smoked and scribble deranged little stories in notebooks and then I’d go to the library and type them out and make my favorite teacher worry by sharing them. In high school and college, I did theater (behind the scenes) and wrote backstage during shows, using a flashlight with a gel covering to dim the light. I dropped out of college for a while and went out west. I got a job. From midnight to eight, I sat in a cramped booth where the walls were lined with graffiti and petty vandalism from the other girls I worked with. I talked to lonely men while I wrote about who I imagined them to be. I moved again and got another kind of job working midnight to eight and I wrote there too, about who you become and the kinds of people you meet when the rest of the world is asleep.
Once in a while, I try to write in my office on campus, between classes and during office hours but it’s hard to concentrate. I stare at a white wall in an office I haven’t bothered to decorate. I distract myself with G-Chat and Twitter and Google Reader. I grade. My office is off a busy hallway so I listen to the aimless chatter of the students—mostly about drinking and dating. Their lives seem so torrid. They fascinate me. I try not to turn their lives into stories—they have a right to be young.
IKEA does not make a comfortable couch. Last summer, I had just finished five years of graduate school. I was broke but I needed furniture that could be seen by other faculty members because that seemed important, mature. I have wine glasses, you see, and now I use them for drinking wine, at least some of the time. IKEA couches are short, narrow and the leather is cheap, sticks to bare thighs. I’m 6’3”. Stretching comfortably is not an option. I do most of my writing sitting straight up on this narrow, uncomfortable couch.
There is nothing interesting about where I write but I can write anywhere. Everything about my writing, for better or worse, comes from inside me. I have always been this way.
I wrote my novel on this stupid couch, wrote hours at a time, every day for three months, thinking, “If I ever get a nice advance, I’m going to buy a better couch.”
When I moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I went sight unseen. A long relationship had ended so I quit my good, sometimes great job. I moved to the end of the world. I often make big decisions during profound moments of emotional distress. I never know where I’ll end up. The first few years were rough and lonely. The winters were long, seven months long, so much snow,
the constant whine of snowmobiles, days of darkness. I didn’t understand the people, venison everywhere. At school, there was lots of reading and pretending to understand de Certeau and Foucault and using big words that aren’t really words and trying to be smart enough. I wrote in my living room, in a comfortable armchair, wondering if I would survive five years. Most of my stories were about exile and escape. Writing was the escape.
There is a cabin on a lake in a place the world has forgotten. I often imagine myself at that cabin, lying with a man on an open sleeping bag in the dead night heat of summer, staring at the stars in the sky so clear it’s hard to make sense of just how beautiful the night can be. It’s where the man I left behind took me to make me feel better when I was feeling too much of everything and desperately wanting to feel nothing at all. We lost something, but we had each other and we had that place. It felt like a home.
When we started going to the cabin, I wasn’t writing. I didn’t care about telling stories. Writing was the most useless thing in the world. He told me he was taking me to his cabin, didn’t ask my opinion. He Tarzan, me Jane. He joked he was stealing me away from my imaginary friends in the computer and my dissertation. He was trying to help me find a little peace. I’m not a fan of the woods. Bad things happen in the woods. I’ve read fairy tales. I’ve been in the woods.
The first time he took me to the cabin, we were driving back from the casino, which is how we met in a roundabout way, or when he first saw me. I didn’t really notice him because, frankly, all you see at the poker table are white boys. They blend.
We got off the two-lane highway and took a road and then another road, each one getting progressively narrower, less paved. I tried not to panic. We finally stopped by a mailbox bearing his last name written in white lettering, literally written. We drove down a long driveway that felt like it had been recently gutted by wagon wheels. Finally, I saw the outline of a cabin and I exhaled slowly.
He jumped out of his truck and I slid out after him. He grabbed a flashlight from the toolbox in the truck bed. He shined the light on the cabin and said, “This is mine.” I didn’t need to look at his face to know he was smiling. I didn’t care what the cabin looked like because it was his and it mattered to him.
The cabin has three rooms, indoor plumbing, electricity. The floors are made of those wide, eight-inch wooden planks, the kind you rarely see anymore. The walls are rough hewn, pine. After a brief tour, he said, “Come with me,” and we went back outside. We walked along a narrow path toward the water. The trees were dark and thick above us. In the most remote place in the world, at the most unexpected and complicated time in my life, he made my world bigger.
The moon, when it’s high and bright, casts long beams of light across the lake. It’s a sight that makes you believe in something. We sat, quietly, looking out at the water. The long beams of light looked like they were showing the way to somewhere important. He held my hand, so tightly, and I buried my face in his shoulder. It was a little easier to breathe.
The cabin became a place where we could forget about the terrible months we were trying to move past. It was a place where I could write. I need to write so the cabin became a place where
I could feel a little bit alive, a little bit home, more like myself. We spent many weekends there, stealing away late Friday night, our stuff rattling around in the back of his truck as we sped down country highways. During the day, he fished or cleaned his guns or walked around in the woods doing man things, I suppose. I spent most of my time on a lawn chair in front of the cabin, writing, my laptop warm on my thighs. I would stop every now and then to stare out at the lake, watching him fish, marveling at how he could sit so perfectly still, so patiently, waiting for the promise of something.
As I wrote, on the lakefront, I wondered how I ever became the kind of woman who sits outside, writing and staring at a man fishing while she writes. I lost count of how many stories I wrote out there—the same story really, told in different ways, me trying to rewrite an ending that couldn’t be rewritten. But I was writing. It was a step.
Back in town, I had nothing to say to other people. I didn’t want to write or talk or think. I wanted to be left alone. I went through the motions, pretended to be fine, did what needed doing. On the lake though, that hollow, half-life fell away. I was happy to be with him, tried to talk, wrote and wrote and wrote. He didn’t mind how on the lake I got so absorbed in my writing that everything and anyone around me disappeared. In the evenings, I read aloud what I was working on. He embraced my writing unconditionally. He embraced me unconditionally, waited patiently for the promise of me.
To the left of my shitty, uncomfortable couch in my new apartment is a wall that is mostly floor to ceiling glass, doors onto a balcony, and beyond that, a green, grassy field. I haven’t gotten curtains yet so my view is always unobstructed. The developer who built these apartments ran out of money so the untamed beauty of that field remains. Sometimes, I see a buck galloping across the field, his muscles straining and wild, followed by a small pack of deer. I think of the home I left behind, on the lakefront, the place where I started to find my voice again after I lost it. Along the edges of this field are trees. When he helped me move in, we stood on the balcony while he smoked. He pointed out to the tree line, told me what kinds of trees we were looking at. He works with trees for a living and knows such things. He said, “You’ll have a small piece of home here. You can look out at those trees and imagine that just beyond those trees, there’s water. You can write.”
There’s a guy I see casually—our interactions are utterly meaningless, but I’m human. It’s something to do. He doesn’t get the writing thing. That’s what he calls it, the writing thing. He complains if I can’t hang out because I’m writing. He complains about the couch and its discomforts as if I manufactured the couch myself. He asks, “When are you going to get curtains for these windows?” as if I’m seeking his input on interior decoration. I’ve grown fond of my uncomfortable couch and the bare windows with a view. This is where I write. This is the home I have made for myself in a place that is not home.
I stare at those trees on the edge of the field behind my apartment all the time. I look right through those trees so I can see the water’s edge. At dusk, the sky on the wide, open prairie is gorgeous—deep reds and pinks and blues. I take pictures, trying to hold on to a piece of that wonder. I love thinking about how a beautiful sky stretches from where I am to where the man
from the deep woods is. He’s sitting on the dock with his fishing pole, squinting as he studies a ripple on the water, waving to me and raising his thumb high in the air as I wave back. That’s where I write, too.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger forthcoming in 2017. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. Roxane was the founding Essays Editor and is a current Advisory Board member for The Rumpus. You can find her at roxanegay.com. More from this author →
KingWhatWritingIs.pdf
lUIlI!' 10 n lull stop, and one nanosccond l.ucr ,lIl1l'\pl.lIlllI'~ 11l11II"gill:irY cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting th.u I did 111,1III I.H.I do it.
1 happened to mention this to a hypnotist I saw 1II;'IlY years ago, and he I' looked at me very nicely. At first I thought he was feeling around on the floor for the silent alarm button, but then be gave me the following exercise, which I still use to this day.
Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then 14 isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance paren- tal units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your bead. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won't do what they want-won't give them more money, won't be more successful, won't see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume- control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.
A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them all in the H head. But I think he's a little angry, and I'm sure nothing like this would ever occur to you.
What Writing 1;1 STEPHEN KING
King,Stephen."WhatWritingIs."On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. NewYork:Poc~etBooks 2000.95-99. Print. '
Telepathy, of course. It's amusing when you stop to think about it f1 h - or years 1peo~ e ave argued ab?ut ~hether. or not such a thing exists, folks like .1. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing pro . I . d 11 h . . cess to ISO ate It, an ate tune It's been right there, lying out in the ope lik M Poe's Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some de I e b r. I b li h . . ff gree, ute I~vet at wnting 0 ers the purest distillation. Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but even If I am we may as well stick with writing, since it's what we came he t think and talk about. re 0
My name is Stephen King. I'm writing the first draft of this part at my desk 2 (the o~e under the ~ave) on a snowy morning in December of 1997. There are thmgs on my mind. Some are worries (bad eyes Christmas shop . even started, wife under the weather ' pmg not with a virus), some are good things r:- (our younger son made a surprise visit I Books are a uniquely portable home from college, I got to play Vince magic. Taylor'S "Brand New Cadillac" with The Wallflowers at a concert), but right now all that stuff is up top. I'm in another place, a basement place whe th
I f b . h I' h re ereare ots o: ng t, ig ts and clear images. This is a place I've built for myself over the y.ea~s.It s a far-seelll~ place. I know it's a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place should also be a basement I b h ' h .. . h U p.ace, utt at s ow It ISWit me. you construct your own far-seeing place y . h. . , oumlg t put It ill a treetop or on the roof of the World Trade Center or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. That's your little red wagon, as Robert McCam . f hi I mon says 111 one o. is nove s.
This book is scheduled to be published in the late sum- mer or early fall of 2000. If that's how things work out, then you are somewhere downstream on the timeline from me ... but you're quite likely in your own far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages. Not that you have to be there; books are a uniquely portable magic. I usually Listento one in the car (always unabridged; I think abridged audio-books are the pits), and carry another wherever I go. You just never know when you'll want an
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escape hatch: mile-long lines at tollbooth plazas, the fifteen minutes you h.avc to spend in the hall of some boring college building ,:aitil.'~ for your advisor (who's got some yank-off in there threatening to commit sUICIdebec~u~ehelshe is flunking Custom Kurrnfurling 101) to come out so you can g~t his Signature on a drop-card, airport boarding lounges, laundromats on ral~y afte~noons, and the absolute worst, which is the doctor's office when the guy IS runrung late and you have to wait half an hour in order to have something sensitive mauled. At such times I find a book vital. If I have to spend time 10 purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a l~nd- ing library (if there is it's probably stocked with nothing but novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books, ha-ha, joke's on you, Steve).
So I read where I can but I have a favorite place and probably you do,, . . . , too--a place where the light is good and the vibe IS usually strong. For me It s the blue chair in my study. For you it might be the couch on the sunporch, the rocker in the kitchen, or maybe it's propped up in your bed-reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets. .
So let's assume that you're in your favorite receiving place just as I am In \ the place where I do my best transmitting. We'll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000. And here we go-actual telepathy in action. You'll notice I have nothing up my sleeves and that my lips never move. Neither, m?s~ likely, do yours.
Look-here's a table covered with a red cloth. On It IS a cage the size of a ,. small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.
Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary var~ations, or course: some receivers will see a cloth which is turkey red, some WIll see om' that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To colorblind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome-my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out. .,.
Likewise the matter of the cage leaves quite a lot of room for individual interpretati~n. For one thing, it is described in terms of rough. co~parjs~lI. which is useful only if you and I see the world and measure the things in rt WHit similar eyes. It's easy to become careless when making rough comparisons. but the alternative is a prissy attention to detail that takes all the fun out 01 writing. What am I going to say, "on the table is a cage three feet, six inches ill length, two feet in width, and fourteen inches high"? That's not prose, th:l.l\ an instruction manual. The paragraph also doesn't tell us what sort of rnatcrinl the cage is made of-wire mesh? steel rods? glass?-hllt docs il really rnaue t We all understand the cage is a see-through I1ICdiIlIH; Iwyolld thnt, we don't care. The most interesting thing here isn't ~'VI'II 1111' 1,111111 1I11111dlll11\ rnhhi: III
STEPHEN KING I WhaL Writing Is 3071
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I.hecage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point- five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room ... except we are together. We're close.
We're having a meeting of the minds. I sent you a table with a red doth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number 10
eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit, real telepathy. I'm not going to belabor the point, but before we go any further you have to understand that I'm not trying to be cute; there is a point to be made.
f . lness can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hope- 11 u ness, or even despair-the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes harrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.
I'm not as~~ng you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking 12 you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.
Wash the car, maybe. 13
MalcolmXLearningtoRead.pdf
Learning to Read MALCOLM x
lib, QI'Yof Congress
• X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ed. Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine, 1965. Print.
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. Essentially orphaned as.1 child, he lived in a series of foster homes, became involved in criminal activity, and dropped out of school in eighth grade after a teacher told him his race would prevent him from being a lawyer. In 1945, he was sentenced to prison, where he read voraciously. Aftol JOIII ing the Nation of Islam, he changed his last name to "X," explaining in his autobiogldpliy that "my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little.'" A strong advocate for 1111' rights of African Americans, Malcolm X became an influential leader in the Nation of I~I,IIII but left the organization in 1964, becoming a Sunni Muslim and founding an orpanizatlon dedicated to African American unity. Lessthan a year later, he was assassinated.
In this chapter we excerpt a piece from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which he narrated to Alex Haley shortly before his death. We see Malcolm X's account as exem plifying many of the principles that Deborah Brandt introduces in "Sponsors of Literacy" (pp. 44-61). For example, Malcolm X's account of how he came to reading is remarkable for how clearly it shows the role of motivation in literacy and learning: when he had a reason to read, he read, and reading fed his motivation to read further. His account also demonstrates the extent to which literacies shape the worlds available to people and the experiences they can have, as well as how literacy sponsors affect the kinds of literacy we eventually master.
We expect that reading Malcolm X's experiences in coming to reading will bring up your own memories of this stage in your life, which should set you thinking about what worlds your literaciesgive you accessto and whether there are worlds in which you would be considered "illiterate." We think you'll find a comparison of your experiences and Malcolm X's provocative and telling.
Framing the Reading
Getting Ready to Read
Before you read, do at least one of the following activities:
• Do some reading online about Malcolm X and his biography • Start a discussion with friends, roommates, family, ell C1,155
mates about whether, and how, "knowlcdqo I'. PIlWfll "
11"
1)11 IIIAriin 11111'1,,111'\
/I, you /t',rel, WI1W!!'1 llH' InlillWII'C) '1," ...111111, I low would Malcolm X's lift' ""VI' III'I'll dilfl'1!'111 11Ills literacy experien(('~ hold 111'1'11
IIII((lI(,l1t7 . • I low was Malcolm X's literacy Inextricably entangled with his life experiences, rus
'cI(C, and the religion he chose? • Ilow do Malcolm X's early literacy experiences and literacy sponsors compare to
your own?
.................................................................... " .
Itwas bec:l.use of my letters that I happ~ned to stumble upon starting to 1ncquire some kind of a homemade education. I became increasingly frustrated
,\I 110tbeing able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrorc, especially those to Mr. Eli- j,\h Muhammad. Tn the street, I had lx-cn the most articulate hustler out Ihen ..'-! had commanded attention when ! said something. But now, trying lO write simple English, I '101 only wasn't articulate, Iwasn't even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something such as "Look, daddy, k,t 1111: pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad-"
Many who today hear me somewhere in person~ or on television, or ~hose 3 who read something I've said, win think I went to school far beyond the eighth gradi.'. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies. ., ,
" had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made 4 IIH' [eel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge o! any c ouvcrsarion he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked lip had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all of Ihe words that might as well have been in Chinese. When J just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said, So I had COIlIC to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading Il101ions, Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had re- ll'ived thc motivation that Idid.
I ~;\W lh;11 thc best thing Icould do was get hold of a dictionary-to study, 5 III klHIl some words, [ was lucky enough to reason a.lso that 1 should try to 1I11proV(' my penmanship, It was sad, I couldn't evcn wri.rc ,in ;t stnlij.\hl li',le, II wn~ hOlh iLk-::ls together that moved me to reqlll'si n thCllo'I.\ry lliollg With >,OllleI:\hkl~ and pCl1cils from the Norfolk Prisol1 (:oll1llv fll hlllli
I ~1)l"11IWOd:lY~ jllst riming nncertninly Ihrolll',I, 1111 alii 11111111\ ',. P''I\I'S, J'd 6 III'V!" 'l';dl/('(l.,o Illlllly wnnis l'xisll'dl I didll'l 11111\\11"1" I, ""llh I III'I'tI('1I 10 11',111111111111),,111.., III "1,1" ..,111111' killd (11ilL 111111,11"1III "P 1i11
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In the street, I had been the most
articulate hustler out there-I had
commanded attention when / said
something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn't
articulate, I wasn't even functional.
".... '"' ~. .. . . ..
2
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.111 Ill~ slow, p:lil1''("kllll\, 1'1',1',1 d 11,111"" "I'"~:,IU)PIL'd into Illy t"l1k'l ~'V("}' thlllg printed on Ihn! (11\1I"'gl', dO\\,lI 10 II", pum tuuuou marks.
I believe it took IIH' ,I d.I), 111"11, .iluud, I read back, to myself, cvcryt hiru; H I'd written on the tablet. OV!''- .uul over, aloud, to myself, ) read m}' OWIl h.mdwriting.
I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words+-immenscly proud ., 10 realize that not only had Iwritten so much at one time, but I'd written words that Inever 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 Ididn't remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right IIOW,that "aardvark" springs to my mind, The dictionary had a picture of ir, il long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites 1,.':1 ught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.
!was so fascinated that Iwent on-1 copied the dictionary's next page. And 10 the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I nlso learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the diction .uy is like a miniature encyclopedia, Finally the dictionary's A section had filled ;\ 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 Iwrote in my t.iblct, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would gU('~~I wrote a million words.
I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, Icould j(1I II rhe first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what tlH' book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world rhnr opened, Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, ill every free moment Ihad, if Iwas not reading in the library, Iwas reading Oil Illy bunk, You couldn't have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between M r, Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors-usually Ella :'111t! Reginald-and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking .ihout being imprisoned, In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in Illy life.
The Norfolk Prison Colony'S library was in the school building. A variety of I) classes was taught there by instructors who came from such places as Harvard .ind Boston universities. The weekly debates between inmate teams were also held in the school building. You would be astonished to know how worked up L ouvict debaters and audiences would get over subjects like "Should Babies Ik Fl'd Milk?"
Available on the prison library'S shelves were books on just abollt every gCI1 'I t',;11 subject, Much of the big private collection that Parkhurst had willed to thl' pri~()n was still in crates and boxes in the back of the library-thousands of old hoob. Somc of them looked ancit'nl: covcrs fadcd, old-time parchment-look ifig hilldilll-\, Parkhurst, I've l11rntiolll'd, Nt'I'I1t1'1I III h,lve been principally infert'Sh'd ill hislory rind religion, 11(' IHid IIII' 1III1111'V'Ilid ill(' special intcrest 10 h:lv!' il 10101' hooblhat you would"'1 !til \ 1 1111\1111,.tII Il'Lld,l1ion. Any collcgl' lihl'll'Y \Vllldd havl' lwl''' lucky 10 gt I III II I "lit 1111111
(\, )011 ~.IIII1I1.If..\IIII"I·~IWll.,II)'111.11"1till \\1111 111\11W,'~ h,·.IVYl·mph.ISIS II Oil rchnhiliuuiou, all inmate W.1S1,111111'1111)'1111II III "11111111 ".III·d .111unusually intense interest in books. There W:1' .1I,I/,d,l. 1IIIIIIhii lit well l'I';,d inmates, cs- pccially the popular debaters. SOl11t'W,'II' ....11.1 h\ 111;111\III Ill' pr.11tically walk- ing encyclopedias. They were almost cclchnt ics. No 11111\1'1 ~IIYwould ask any student to devour literature as I did when this new wor ld opl'Ill'd 10 me, of being able to read and understand.
[ read more in my room than in the library itself. An inmate who was known 15 to read a lot could check out more than the permitted maximum number of books. I preferred reading in the total isolation of my own room.
When 1 had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten 16 P.M. 1 would be outraged with the "lights out." It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing.
Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into 17 my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when "lights out" came, Iwould sit on the floor where I could continue reading in that glow.
At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time 18 I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And .IS soon as the guard passed, 1 got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes-until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that.
The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed howhistory had been "whitened"- 19 when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out. Mr. Muhammad couldn't have said anything that would have struck me much harder. Ihad never forgotten how when my class, me and all of those whites, had studied seventh-grade United States history back in Mason, the history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph, and the teacher had gotten a big laugh with his joke, "Negroes' feet are so big that when they walk, they leave a hole in the ground.".
This is one reason why Mr. Muhammad's teachings spread so swiftly all 20 over the United States, among all Negroes, whether or not they became fol- lowers of Mr. Muhammad. The teachings ring true-to every Negro. You can hardly show me a black adult in America-or a white one, for that matter- who knows from the history books anything like the truth about the black man's role. In my own case, once I heard of the "glorioLls history of the black man," I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history.
r can remember accurately the very fust set of books that really impressed 21 me. I have since bought that set of books and have it at home for my children In read as they grow up. It's called Wonders of the World. It's full of pictures of .Ircheological finds, statues that depict, usually, non-European people.
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1111111111hlllll,~ II!-<'Wtlll )111'(1111'N,\'ffll I'll/I II'tI, ,1f/1I11. l u-ud II. C. W('II~' ( )111 IHI" 1I/III,f,1I ", .)011" 11/ HIII( k 1'011.: h\ \\" I , 1\. I hi I\IlI" g.lvc Ilil' ,I glIlIlJl\l' 111111 II" Ill." k p"lIpk'~ history before they ~,IIIII'III till" c uuutry, Caner (;. W()()d~oll\ N".'!I" 11"luI)I opened my eyes about hl.u k l'IIIP"TS before the black slave wu ... hllllll~hl In till' United States, and the early Negro struggles for freedom.
I, (\. I{ogt'rs' three volumes of Sex and Race told about race-mixing bclor.: 'I ( IImt\ 11I1ll';about Aesop being a black man who told fables; about Egypl\ I'lIoIl,1(Ih...; about the great Coptic Christian Empires; about Ethiopia, llw \ IIlh\ olde!'.t continuous black civilization, as China is the oldest continuous , IVIII/,Ilion.
Mr. Muhammad's teaching about how the white man had been created led 'I 1111' III hl/(lill1-:s ill Genetics by Gregor Mendel. (The dictionary's G section wa .. Whl'II' I lind learned what "genetics" meant.) r really studied this book by the (\" ..111.111monk. Reading it over and over, especially certain sections, helped 1111'hI understand that if you started with a black man, a white man could be PllHllIll'd; bill starting with a white man, you never could produce a black 111.111 because thc white gene is recessive. And since no one disputes that there W,I" hili one Original Man, the conclusion is clear. Ihllll1g the last year or so, in the New York Times, Arnold Toynbce IIM'd .H
till' WOld "bleached" in describing the white man. (His words were: "Whilt' (1,1'" hlc.ichcd) human beings of North European origin .... ") Toynbcc .ilso II'kl rt'd to the European geographic area as only a peninsula of Asia. Ill' 'i.lId 11"'11'I..,110such thing as Europe. And if you look at the globe, you will M'I' Iltl Yllllr~l'lf that America is only an extension of Asia. (But at the samc lillll' 10Yllh(·(·is among those who have helped to bleach history. He has written lh.11 \llh,1 w;\S the only continent that produced no history. He won't write Ih.ll 1~\.III1.FVl:ry day now, the truth is coming to light.) I III'WI' will forget bow shocked Iwas when Ibegan reading about slavery's 1"
1111.11hllll'Or. It made slich an impact upon me that it later becamc one of III)' 1,1\I '"ll' ~ubjects when I became a minister of Mr. Muhammad's. The world's 111111,11I101lMr0L1Scrime, the sin and the blood on the whitc man's hands, :1rl' ,tlllIlI,,1impossiblc to believe. Books like the one by Frederick Olmstcad OPl'l1l'd 111\1·)'1·...10 Ihc horrors suffered when tbe s,lave was landed in the United SllIll'l>. IIII' Ellropean woman, Fannie Kjmball, who had married a Southern while sinVI' 1"\111'1,described how human beings were degraded. Of course I read Ulltll' 11111/ \ Cabill. In fact, I believe that's the only novel I have ever read sinll' I ,lillii'll Herious reading.
1'.11~hursl 's collection also contained some bound pamphlets of Ihe Aboll :!'i' 111I1I1~1AIlI i Sin very Society of New England. I read descriptions of 01rocitil· ..., '"", IhoM' illustrations of black slave women tied u.p and flogged wilh whips; "I hl.,~" lI10thers watching their babies being dragged off, nevcr to bl' sel'lI h) IIII'll Iliolhers t1gain; of dogs ('Ifwr slnv('s, ;ll1d of the fugitive slrtv~' calc"l'I'~, 1\" whllt· I1WIl wilh whips and dllh.., .11It!l h,III1" and guns. I read "hollt 11ll' 'lllll'I' pn',II:lwr Nat TUl'l1cr, who Pili till' 1",11III Cod illto tlw whitt SlnWlll.lsll'l. NIII 1'II111rlw.I!'.II'1going .1101111111111111111111\1'11'111IIll' sky illld "11011 vil)l('III"
1:14 """T R 1 1111110"It·~
"I'!'IIOIII 101 rlu- hl.ick 1)1,111. There ill Vilgllll,IClIIl' IlIgh! in 183J, N.II .uu] '.I'1·l'lI olhl'l sl,lvl'~ suincd out at his master's horne and through the night tlH') went 110111nne plantation "big house" to the next, killing, until by the next 1I10rn- Illg ')7 white people were dead and Nat had about 70 slaves following him. Whitl' people, terrified for their lives, fled from their homes, locked themselves lip III public buildings, hid in the woods, and some even left the state. A small ,II Illy of soldiers took two months to catch and hang Nat Turner. Somewhere I h.ive read where Nat Turner's example is said to have inspired John Brown to mvade Virginia and attack Harper's Ferry nearly thirty years later, with rlurtccn white men and five Negroes.
I rend l lcrodotus, "the father of History," or, rather, I read about him. 28 Alit! I rend the histories of various nations, which opened my eyes gradually, then wider and wider, to how the whole world's white men had indeed acted like devils, pillaging and raping and bleeding and draining the whole world's 11011 white people. I remember, for instance, books such as Will Durant's story 01 Oriental civilization, and Mahatma Gandhi's accounts of the struggle to drive the British out of India.
Boo], nfrcr book showed me how the white man had brought upon the 29 world's black, brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings 01 exploitation. I saw how since the sixteenth century, the so-called "Christian tl'lltkr" white man began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African em- plfes, nnd plunder, and power. I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone .1I1l0ng the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit 01 Christ's teachings-meek, humble, and Christ-like.
I perceived, as] read, how the collective white man had been actually nothing 30 bllt (l pir:lticnl opportunist who used Faustian machinations to make his own (;hl'istianilY his initial wedge in criminal conquests. First, always "religiousLy," hl' hrnnded "heathen" and "pagan" labels upon ancient non-white cultures and l ivilil',:ltions. The stage thus set, he then turned upon .his non-white victims his W\,;lponS of war.
I rend how, entering India-half a billion deeply religious brown people- 31 III\' Brit ish white man, by 1759, through promises, trickery and manipulations, lllill rollnl much of India through Great Britain's East India Company. The p,lI'll~itical gritish administration kept tentacling out to half of the subconti- IItlll. In 11157, some of the desperate people of India finally mutinied-and, l'Xl'l'plillg the African slave trade, nowhere has history recorded any more Illllll·l.'l·SS:lrybestial and ruthless human carnage than the British suppression 01 !Ill' non white Indian people.
()vl'r I I)' million African bJacks-cic).,t· to till' 19 Hl~ popllhlliol1 of the 32 I lilliI'd Slntes-wcre murdered or CI1101.1VC,ddlllllll~ 1111'...I.IV!·t1.ldl'. And I read how wlll'1I the slave market wns gilltll,d, 1111\.1111111,.111,111\\IIIII'I'l1wI'r~ of Eu- I'llll' 11I'XIenrved up, as their lolollil· ....till III Iii ,I Itt .1. III 1111"1111"l'olltinent. Alld 1':III'oIW'Srht1IICl'llcril's 1'01' JlI\' III 1.1111111\ Iii I I tI I 1111.~ 1\,1111\'nf linked ('xpluil.llioll ,Inel POW('I 111)111( oIpl 11111111111111"
·Ii'IlI'.II,tlds .IIHIIIII' w.l1d"1I11111111111It I 1 111111III 11111,tllh,,'" 1IIlIlk~. Not II 'VI'II 111(,"11\11I1t,11I1I1I.1I1111ldd1111' I••!II III II I III III dlll1 dlll'o" hllllks Wl'll'
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ln-provulnu; uuhvput.tblc prool rh.u 1111'1,,111'111\1'\\11I1l' 1I1.lnhnd ,lUl'(l Ilk!, ,I devil III vutu.rlly every contact he h,1I1 \lllh Ihl' world's collective 1I01l wlurr 111,111,I 11"'1\'11todny ro the radio, and W:ll\.h television, and read the hcndlinev .Ihullt till' collective white man's fear and tension concerning China. Wlwn till' wlun- 1111111 professes ignorance about why the Chinese hate him so, my mind 1..,III'tht'lp Ilnshing back to what I read, there in prison, about how the hlood 10Il,lw.II" of this same white man raped China at a time when China was tl'lI~t IlIg .uu] helpless. Those original white "Christian traders" sent into China mil 11011...III pounds of opium. By 1839, so many of the Chinese were addicts th,lt ( hlll.I'~ desperate government destroyed twenty thousand chests of opium, Till' III sl ()piunl War was promptly declared by the white man. Imagine! Declaring uvu Ilp011someone who objects to being narcotized! The Chinese were severely 111'.111'11,with Chinese-invented gunpowder.
l'hr Treaty of Nanking made China pay the British white man for the 1,1 c1nt r lIynl opium; forced open China's major ports to British trade; forced ( 11111,1III abandon Hong Kong; fixed China's import tariffs so low that cheap lit Itlsh articles soon flooded in, maiming China's industrial development.
Alle'r ,I second Opium War, the Tientsin Treaties legalized the ravaging I~ 111'111111trndc, legalized a British-French-American control of China's l'IIS- 111111"Chiun tried delaying that Treaty's ratification; Peking was looted IIlId (,I1III1'd. ""III the foreign white devils!" was the 1901 Chinese war cry in the HOWl II.
Hl'llI'lliol1. Losing again, this time the Chinese were driven from Peking's choi, nt .1I1'.IS,The vicious, arrogant white man put up the famous signs, "Chincw .1Ilt! dog~ not allowed."
1(I'd China after World War n closed its doors to the Western white world. "t.,,~iVl' ChilH.:se agricultural, scienti:fi.c, and industrial efforts are descrihed ill ,I IlIlok Ihllt I.ife magazine recently published. Some observers inside Red Chill.! hll\I' I'\'p0l'[t'd Lhat the world never has known sLich a hate-white c~u'lr>oil!.11.IIi 1'0IIIIWgoing on in this non-white country where, present birth-rates continll IIIf:, III fifty more years Chinese will be hal£ the earth's population. And it Sl'elll~ Ikll \l1I1Il' Chinese chickens will soon corne home to roost, with Chino's recI'1l1 ~1111,'"llIllludcar tests.
I (·t liS face reality. We can see in the United Nations a new world order Iwillg I~ ·.It.qwd, along color lines-an alliance among the non-white nations. All1erit':1'H II N.Al1lhassador Adlai Stevenson complained not long ago tbat in the Unitl'd N.IIII1I1"1"u skin game" was being played. He was right. He was facing rcnlilY, ,\ ....kill l!.(lllle" is being pLayed. But Ambassador Stevenson soundecllike .It·';SI' ,.1I11I'~ ;Il\.u,ing Ihe marshal of carrying a gun. Because who in the world'., hi., till) l'wr has played a worse "skin game" than the white man?
1\.11.Mllh:lllllnnd, to wholll I \Y.lo.;Wl'ililll\ <I,lily, had no idea of willi I ,I IIl'W I" wlllid had OI)l'lIl'd lip to IIll' 111111111\"IIIV t'!tOI'ts 10 document' his il·:tchiligH III 11111)1.:..
WIH'II I dlSl(lV\'rt'd ph i1\)""1'11\ , I 1111d Itt 11111111.tli till' I.llldll1oll'k, o( plilio III ·,'Jpllll.ddl'l'l,loPIIH'III.Ct;tdll.dh.11I 111111111111tilt 111.1pllllp\ophl'I ..,(hlldc'III,d
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,11111 ()l'Il'lll.tI, 1'11l' Ol'll'lIt.ll 1'11111""1'1111\ "'" 1111 lilli" I (.llllt to prefer; liuully, III~ 1I11Pll""IOIlwas rh.u mo« tk(ldl'lIl,III'IIII ....lIphy h.u] l.irgcly been borrowed lroru IIH' Oriental thinkers, Smr,III''i. 1111 11I'I1,llhl', traveled in Egypt, Some ~()lIrt'l'S even say that Socrates wus 111111,111'11111111\(1111('of the Egyptian mysteries, ()hviously Socrates got some of 111', wl1>l1011l,lllIOlig the East's wise men,
I have often reflected upon the new ViSlil)'tlint rending opened to me, I knew 41 right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life, As I we it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive, I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that Iread, a little bit more sensitivity to the deaf- ness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America, Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" J told him, "Books." You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm. not studying something Ifeel might Ill' able to help the black man.
Yesterday Ispoke in London, and both ways on the plane across the Atlantic 42 I was studying a document about how the United Nations proposes to insure the human rights of the oppressed minorities of the world. The American black man I.,the world's most shameful case of minority oppression. What makes the black 111<111 think of himself as only an internal United States issue is just a catch-phrase, two words, "civil rights." How is the black man going to get "civil rights" before Iirsr he wins his human rights? If the American black man will start thinking ,I bout his human rights, and then start thinking of himself as part of one of the world's great peoples, he will see he has a case for the United Nations. Ican't think of a better case! Four hundred years of bJack blood and sweat 43
invested here in America, and the white man still bas the black man begging 1'01' whar every immigrant fresh off the ship can take for granted the minute he walks down the gangplank.
Hut I'm digressing. I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a 44 f',ood library. Every time 1 catch a plane.T have with me a book that I want to I'l'ad-and that's a lot of books these days. If Iweren't out here every day bat- IIiug t he white man, J could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosit y-e-becausc you can hardly mention anything I'm not curious about. I don't think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life h.id gom: differently and I had attended some college. I imagine that one of Iill' bi~gl"il troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much p.uuy milling, [rarcrnities, and boola-boola and all of that. Where else but in ,I prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being ab.le to study intensely '1lIlll·tilllt'S ns much as fifteen hours a day?
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C)u....tions for Discussion and Joumaflnq
WIIIl ',1'1'111" to Ill' Malcolm X's intended clucllt'lICt'? Ilow do you know? II, 'w dol''> Mtllcolm X define literacy? How does this definition compare to school hd',1'cill I(IIacyl
111,IWIIIIJon Deborah Brandt's definition of literacy sponsor, list as many of Malcolm X's IIII'ldC y sponsors as you can find. (Remember that sponsors don't have to be people, 11111(,III <1150be ideas or institutions, which can withhold literacy as well as provide n.) Wille II sponsors were most influential? What were their motivations?
11 1""llcll explains that people often subvert or misappropriate the intentions of their ',POII',OIS (see pp. 46, 56-57, paras. 7 and 27). Was this ever the case with Malcolm X? II ',C), how?
'I II~ I' M<llcolm X, many readers have memories in which a reference work like a die- 1IIIIldly or an encyclopedia figures significantly. Did his account bring back any such 111"lllOliesfor you? If so, what were they? Mllcoiln X asserts that his motivation for reading-his desire to understand his own I'XP(,IIC'l1ces-led him to read far more than any college student Respond to his clalm. 1101'," particular motivation helped you decide what, or how much, to read?
I Wildl was the particular role for writing that Malcolm X describes in his account or 111., 111I'ld(Y education? How do you think it helped him read? Can you think of ways 111,11 wrillll() helped you become a better reader?
Applying and Exploring Ideas
1I11I" Deborah Brandt and Malcolm X wrote before much of the technology that you Illi jI 101granted was invented. How do you think technologies such as the World Wld(' Web, text messaging, Skype, and the like shape what it means to be "literate" III 111(1United States today?
, WillI' " one-page narrative about the impact of an early literacy sponsor on your li'fe HI'l ClIull as many details as you can and try to assess the difference that sponsor m,lcll' III YOIII literate life.
Mllc Dim X turned to the dictionary to get his start in acquiring basic literacy. If you IIII't I) person learning to read today, what primary resource would you suggest to IIII'III?Would it be print (paper) or electronic? How would you tell them to use it, .uul how do you think it would help them?
Meta Moment Wit,! I dn yml Ihlnk your teacher mlqlll '"IV I', 1111'111(1',1Illlpolt.mt idea in the M~I(()lm X II'KI' I)" Yllllliljlf'C', or do you Il,lvc' ,I 1I11I"ll'llllIlIilIIIIII (111 wh,11the'mosl irnporltHlI Icll''! 1 ,11'pl,lIn
Tan_MotherTongue (1).pdf