Have you ever wondered what language is or meant to you? Language can mean many things such as where it comes from if you speak more than one language or it can also mean a voice of power. In this essay I'm going to be talking about how this plays a big part in our day to day life. In the article “Homemade Education” excerpt from the Autobiography of Malcolm X talks about who he is and what language meant to him. Also another article is “Martin Luther King Jr. biography” gives his perspective on the power of language and how it helped him become who he was as a leader. “Language plays a big part in our life because it gives us a voice to stand up for what we want”. Without leaders before us such as Martin Luther King Jr or Malcolm X we would be here to this day without their power of language. Martin Luther King Jr was an American religious leader and a Civil-Rights activist. The power of his language played a big part in the civil-rights movement because his voice impacted a lot of African-American slaves to fight back against the white …show more content…
They had the same goal to help their people get a voice of their own to fight back. In Malcolm X article “Homemade Education” he speaks on his education and how going to jail and being attacked by police were experiences that changed him and mindset on who he is and how he wanted to have a language for other people that didn’t. That's what gave him the courage to fight back from his people and become their voice that they didn’t have for themselves.” My Homemade Education gave me, and with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was affecting the black race in America.” When Malcolm X gave them their own language people started protesting this made other power speakers such as Barack Obama become power speak they got inspired from are leaders history
Malcolm X, a world-renowned activist leader. His essay “Homemade Education” expresses his determination to read and write better. He desired to be able to grab the audience attention and shock them with his knowledge. Malcolm X became an influential leader from reading and writing in prison despite the lack of formal education of black men.
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr's techniques are very different, but similar. They both want the same thing: negro companies. The way they carry out this, though, is different. Malcolm wants to make his own negro company. Furthermore, Martin wants to protest peacefully by banning products from companies that do not hire negroes.
“Learning to Read”, by Malcolm X reveals that he had a reading and writing problem. Malcolm X wanted to get the attention of Elijah Muhammad, but did not have the skills to write to him through letter while he was in jail. Muhammad was a religious leader and all Malcolm X knew was his street slang. Malcolm X was frustrated that he cannot express his thoughts through letter, because he didn’t know how. He decided while he was in jail to learn how to write and read, by copying the dictionary.
In the excerpt, Learning to Read, Malcolm X explained how being incarcerated allowed him to have the necessary resources to learn how to read. The ability to read sparked his motivation to be a political influence during the Civil Rights Movement. The purpose that Malcolm X had while writing, Learning to Read, was to appeal to the emotions of the oppressed African-Americans. During his imprisonment Malcolm X read many books about the enslavement of Africans, and he realized the “sin and blood on the white man’s hands”, which give him incentive to spread his political message for post-slavery equality for African-Americans. In a New York Times article, Arnold Toynbee, discussing the “bleached...human beings of North European origin” and
Shivam Patel Professor Caitlyn Doherty English 1001 30 January 2023 Text in Action Proposal For the Text in Action paper, I plan on using Malcolm X’s Learning to Read. I chose this piece of text because of the impact Malcolm X had on the Civil Rights Movement. I believe that people like Malcolm, MLK, and Rosa Parks had a big part to do with the changes in culture and beliefs in America on African Americans. The moving essay "Learning to Read" by Malcolm X describes how, while imprisoned, he taught himself to read. He became a civil rights activist after reading about the terrible events in history and learning about them.
Malcolm X's "Prison Studies" is a compelling literacy narrative that vividly recounts the transformative power of education. In this autobiographical essay, Malcolm X reflects on his experience of self-education while serving a ten-year prison sentence for burglary. Through his narrative, he demonstrates the transformative power of literacy and how it enabled him to break free from the constraints of his social and economic background, ultimately leading him toward a life of activism and advocacy. Throughout his essay, Malcolm X details his journey from a self-educated high school dropout to a highly literate and politically engaged individual. He explains that during his time in prison, he realized that his lack of education was a significant
Language is used to convey a message as well as connect people to a particular culture or ethnicity he or she identifies with. People who share the same language share a bond and pass their history through language. In chapter one of The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom Joanne Kilgour Dowdy speak about growing up in Trinidad and her mother insisting on her speaking in the colonizer's language rather than her native Trinidadian language. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy felt as if her identity was being pushed to the side when she was forced to speak “Colonized English” when she was at school or around the social elite of her community, and felt ridiculed from her peers for speaking proper as if she was white or of the elite social class. Dowdy major concern was how to have the freedom to go back and forth from home, language to the public language without feeling judged from both sides of her
Summary of "Learning to Read" by Malcolm X In his essay "Learning to Read" from the chapter "Saved" in Malcolm's Autobiography published in New York (Grove Press, 1965). Malcolm was born in Omaha, Nebraska and his father was a political activist on behalf of Marcus Garvey. After he and his family moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where his father was killed and his mother placed in a mental institution. he became an orphan and ended up on the streets of Detroit where he was known as "Detroit Red".
In” Discovering the Power of Language”, a selection taken from The Autobiography of Malcom X, published in 1964, Malcolm X notes that the power of words is great. Malcolm X implies that the proper vocabulary helps to express emotions. Malcolm X develops his thesis by sharing with his readers his personal experience in prison, how he managed to self-educate himself by reading the dictionary and how he elevated himself from a common criminal to a civil rights activist. The author's purpose is to explain how important is your language in order to be heard. Finally, Malcolm X shares with his readers that being able to read a book and understand what the author is saying made him feel such a freedom that he never felt before.
Getting education isn’t only to impart knowledge, but strengthen motivation that propels learners to work on what they are willing to become. Malcolm X is an good example of a self-educated articulate and powerful black American leader who was vocal against racism and fought for the right of the black American. In the essay “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X identifies how motivated attitude can push someone to further academic career. He says, “let me tell us 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”(page 162). Malcolm recounts his experience on reading journey with motivation of self-education because he understand without the ability to read, a basic
In Frederick Douglas’ essay “Learning to Read,” and Malcolm X’s autobiography one of the most important similarities is that they both used their learning to read as an escape of the white man's persecution. Additionally, both lived in centuries of great oppression, gained their education while imprisoned or enslaved, and overcame the immense obstacle of being black in a white man's time. However, there are obvious differences between the two, such as Douglas simply wanted equality for himself, while Malcolm took his learnings and transformed them into a seething hate of the whites. Douglas was a very clever man who was peaceful and smart, whereas Malcolm had an aggressive mentality. Instead of despising the white race, as Malcolm along with
In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X uses rhetorical analysis to argue how African Americans continued to struggle in gaining education due to racism. He informs people that through our history books, there have been modifications that restrain the truth about the struggles black people faced. Malcolm X encouraged his audience to strive to get the rights that they deserved. He demonstrates that knowledge is very important because the truth empowers us. In his interview he persuades his audience with diction, tone, pathos, ethos, and appeal to emotion to make his point.
Malcolm X's "Literacy Behind Bars" is about the expansion of his world that provokes a burning passion within himself through the world of reading. While incarcerated, the author meets a man named Bimbi who leads the discussion with his stock of knowledge, prompting Malcolm X to further his skills in literacy. Taking small steps, he first broadens his vocabulary by reading alphabetically in the dictionary and copying pages. He reads aloud to himself until the words begin to stick with him. Not long after moves onto books, devouring them at a relentless pace, Malcolm X became so engrossed with reading that he begins breaking curfew rules just to continue reading by using the light outside of his cell.
A Homemade Education by Malcolm X, is an informative essay about the author Malcolm X dedication to further his education by himself. In this essay the author talks about how he was envious, how he turned that into motivation, and how he didn't let the fact that being imprisoned would keep him from pursing his goals. The essay " A Homemade Education" was very meaningful. The most meaningful thing to me about this essay was the dedication behind the authors purpose to further his education.
Our identity is a place upon many attributes of a human being. Whether the person is someone who goes on promoting themselves to the world or not, and it shows how people communicate to others around them. Language is one of the main components that unveils the person’s identity in their everyday life, and they are many different ways to approach a person’s language. Relating to the article of Yiyun Li, “To Speak is to Blunder,” she knows two languages that has its positive and negative outcomes in her life. I to relate to her understanding of language, but a different view of what language means to me.