Essay On Jimmy Santiago Baca

Jimmy Santiago Baca at 20 was convicted of drug charges and sentenced to prison. He was completely illiterate when he went to Prison. But when he got out five years later, he was becoming one of America's favorite poets. Baca started to write about oppression, love and migration. Malcolm X was a street hustler that was convicted of robbery. He spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself. Him learning how to read helped himself become one of the most well known African American, and a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In both Malcolm X and Bacas Books they tell us about the process of how they taught themselves how to read. These are both incredible stories because they defied the odds and were able to develop into great people and incredible writers.

In “Learning to Read ‘excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X’”. Mr. X tells us about how reading had such a tremendous impact in his life. In fact it made him who he was. While in prison he met an inmate named Bimbi who talked him into reading as much as he could. Mr. X started off with reading a dictionary, and as time passed he went on to more articulate readings. After reading book after book on Anti-slavery and realizing and gaining more knowledge of horrible things people did to African Americans. It showed him how
Baca tells us about why he decided to started to learn to read and write, and how he felt as an illiterate young man. Baca felt like, if you didn't know how to read and write it would leads not knowing where windows come from, how cars are made, how people pay for cars. He felt like not knowing how to read and write was the top of his problem, because in prison you don't know anything and how anything operates in society, and that was his nightmare. Like Malcolm X he had people from the outside sending him books. They both had correspondences with other people once they were able to read and