Reading Response To Malcolm X—Sangay.

PART1

Part2

“I was so fascinated that I went on–I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a 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 I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.”(paragraph8)

Malcolm’s interest in reading increased with each page he read, so he copied every page of the dictionary and studied it. Through constant learning, he was able to learn about the history of a lot of places, people, and events that happened long ago. Eventually, Malcolm’s tablet was filled with the whole dictionary. He practiced so much that he picked up his writing speed and ended up writing about a million words.

“When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night about ten P.M. I 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 my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when “lights out” came, I would 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 I heard the approach footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I 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.”(paragraph12)

Despite the prison lights being shut off at 10PM each night in Malcolm’s cell, he used the light coming into his cell from corridor to read his book every night. He was so strategic that, whenever the guards passed by his room every hour at night, he acted as if he was sleeping in his bed. However, as soon as the guards left he sat back on the floor with his book for another hour until he heard the next guards’ footsteps.