Reflective Essay

Falguni Patel
ENC1101-35
Elizabeth Barnes
February 12, 2013
Prison Studies by Malcolm X 1) In this essay Malcolm X describes how he educated himself while he was in prison and how it changed his whole life. His interest in learning how to read and write increased because of one of his prison inmates whose name was Bimbi. Bimbi took control over all conversations because of his huge knowledge. This made Malcolm X kind of jealous and motivated him to start learning. He started to copy a whole dictionary and learned a lot of new words. As he learned more and more he could not stop reading anymore. Malcolm X found the desire of his life and believed that nobody else got more out of going to prison than him. 2) While in prison he used his time wisely. He was not a good reader or was not good at understanding the works. He thought it was in Chinese most of the time. Malcolm X decided that he was going to change his ways and teach himself how to read. Malcolm X got a hold of a dictionary and copied down the first page all the way down to the punctuation marks. After he said that over and over to himself know that he understood it he went to the next page. Well it ended up being the whole dictionary. From that point on you would never see Malcolm X without a book in his hand unless he working. He liked to be reading his whole life. 3) Malcolm X stated “You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man…. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read (89)”. Malcolm X changed his own life with teaching himself how to read and it also took away from his prison time. I chose this quote because it shows how dedicated Malcolm X was to learning and teaching himself how to read a book an understand it. Malcolm X was a very good essay to read because it shows you to never give up on something you want. Even thought he was in prison Malcolm X took his time wisely a learned something good from his experience. 4) The best quote from this story would have to be at the end when Malcolm X said “I imagine one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.” I really enjoy that quote that Malcolm X said, because if you ask many people that failed out of college or dropped out many of those things stated in the quote would be the reasoning. People get all caught up in living the college experience and forgetting about school work. 5) Authors writing this story to audience. Audiences of this story are African-American, Islam, and Muslim. 6) Purpose of this story is how he becomes good in writing and learning. He never gave up himself. And explain us that we have to try and try to become successful in our life.