“You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors… and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life. (paragraph 9)”
The first time I read, this quote stuck out to me. The second time I read, I paused on this quote and decided it was the one I wanted to write about. What really hit me the hardest was the final sentence. Saying that the pursuit of knowledge, and over time attaining said knowledge, left Malcolm feeling more free than the rest of his life was a big statement, especially coming from someone in prison. For him to talk about being locked away, but still being bound to the pursuit of knowledge so strongly that you couldn’t split him from books with a wedge is a key statement here, and is the reason I extended the quote this far back. He was so encapsulated by what he was doing in prison, he ended up forgetting he was in prison! It baffles me that someone could study this long and this hard without thinking of the current circumstances. His yearning for knowledge was what kept him going, even after prison.
