PAPER

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

n.. IIAPI[IIIIII''',III,''

,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?

MAtlCIlM)( 11'1111111111to HI'.ul 111

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