In Malcolm X's "A Homemade Education," Malcolm X discusses his struggles between the language on his childhood streets growing up and the language of literature. Being in prison, he explains how his interest and determination to be able to read and understand. He become more frustrated because with the fact that he couldn’t communicate with people, as he wanted to. He was admired for the fluent words he spoke and was not used to being ignored; even the simplest English was hard for him to write and read. From this situation he recognized his seek for an education.
When Malcolm X met his prison inmate, Bambi, he observed how Bambi was respected by the guards and prisoners. He was impressed by the way Bambi talk about history, theology, literature. Then Malcolm X was motivated by the words of Bambi and started reading books, with the help of dictionary which brought a revolutionary change in him. Long Quote: Malcolm X claims that the Dictionary is a miniature encyclopedia for him, as it helps him to explore many things around him: I was so fascinated that I went on- I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that.
He is described as ‘uncoordinated and clumsy’ and he was often teased and beaten because of this. The author describes him of having a look of ‘a cowering dog’ and I think this is a very good description of his character - he is always being beaten down by other people. He has ‘a stack of wild red hair’ and pale watery blue eyes. Overall, he is not very dashing at first sight, especially as in the previous paragraph, the author has just described how his father is completely the opposite - handsome and charming (when he needed to be). When Meshak (Mish) appears later in the book, he seems little changed; ‘a child in a man’s body’.
This novel is well known for many things, but possibly the most well-noted is its rites-of-passage portrayal and throughout many phrases and paragraphs can be extracted that add to this. At the beginning of the book, it is clear that Jim has been well-protected from the outside world by his parents and knows fairly little of it, as any 11 year-old would. On the second page in Ballard writes: “like all children, Jim was intrigued by alcohol but vaguely disapproved of it,” the fact that Jim was ‘intrigued’ by alcohol exhibits that he was curious of it, it was something he had never really understood. This highlights his youthfulness and innocence. A page after this, it is clear he has great interest in childish things: “Yang enjoyed impressing his eleven-year-old passenger with tall tales of film stunts and trick effects.” Young children, generally, enjoy stories told with great exaggeration and ‘tall tales’ implies that these stories were only partly true, most likely exaggerated to please and ‘impress’ Jim.
He did not have the knowledge necessary to communicate with people outside of the circle of the street runners, gamblers and dope dealers. He did not possess the words that he needed to express himself to them, which disappointed him, he said; "I become increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote." In his quest for fulfillment, Malcolm began to study the dictionary. The dictionary provided him with a wealth of knowledge including a wide variety of words. He acknowledged that, "the dictionary was like a miniature encyclopedia", he learned of people, and places and events from history that he never knew existed.
The school principal and later on my English proffesor followed up with me in my career as a good reader. Professor Petrit never let me to run away from books until I left my country. I owe him a lot for the great patient he had with a student like me. It is not that I was a trouble-maker, but my days of reading weren’t stable. I was all about whenever I felt to
I hated reading the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. It was a very good book but it was so depressing, tragic, and scary. As I read this story, one bad thing happened after another. I did not like the narrator Amir because he was very selfish throughout most of the book and took advantage of a special friendship that him and Hassan shared until Amir didn't want anything else to do with him. As a child, Amir was constantly trying to impress his father, Baba, who looked up to Hassan more than he did Amir.
He found himself becoming polar opposite to his parents and even resenting them because of the fact that they were not college educated people. But when it came the time that realized he wanted to be close with his family it was his education that gave him the ability to speak and care about that. Rodriguez often referred to himself as the so called “scholarship boy” from Hoggarts essay. “For although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student. I was a “scholarship boy” a certain kind of scholarship boy.
Furthermore, when Malcolm would read, he skipped over the words he didn't understand. This made it very hard to understand most of the materials that he read. Bimbi, another inmate, who seemed to captivate his audience with the spoken word, impressed him. Malcolm needed to learn what words meant and how to write and, then, he was waking up to a new world. Malcolm X had few choices but a significant desire to command the written word.
In America to learn proper English was a very hard task in other words it was very difficult to grasp. I have felt uncomfortable reading out loud, yet I have refused to ask for help. Most of my friends would say it is my pride. Junior High I found friends with the same cultural background as myself because I knew they would be able to understand me completely. Even though they knew what I’m was saying to them I felt like sometimes they are probably thinking why I can’t speak proper English.