Kiana Dehmand

Jamison
9th Honors Lit
9/17/15

Malcolm X Reflection

Reading the two articles for the Malcolm X assignment was something that I felt was
very important for me to know and experience reading. I have heard of Malcolm X multiple
times and although I have never even bothered to learn about him in my own free time, I still was
very interested and fascinated by him and his sayings, to which I agreed with all of the ones I
was familiar with. I absolutely loved reading Learning to Read because it was so hard to get
bored by it and stop reading. However, in my opinion I disliked reading Joseph E. Peniels
article, Rescuing Malcolm X From His Calculated Myths because I had no idea what his main
point was and it wasnt the type of writing piece that I would want to keep reading and be
interested in, yet I still thought it was important to read because then, another persons point of
view on MLK and Gandhis counterpart would be shown. In standard, ELAGSE9-10RI1, I
included multiple quotes from the two different informative pieces like Proceeds to say that
Malcolm X is also alongside global icons like MLK and Mahatma Gandhi. And in the other
article by Malcolm X, Everything that Malcolm X knew was due entirely to my (his) prison
studies. Back to Malcolm X and his writing, the part that shocked me the most that I didnt
know about was how such a wise and intelligent man like himself learned everything he knew
including reading and writing all in prison. I would never have thought that was where it all

started with his story. I thought it was very inspiring to read about how he came to be such a
powerful and wise person that is similar to people like MLK and Mahatma Gandhi after all of his
difficult trials and tribulations with trying how to read, write, and learn about the outside world
in general in a place like prison. In the reading standard ELAGSE9-10RI2, I stated my
opinion/claim that While one is an autobiography, the other is a biography that doesnt go deep
into the meanings Malcolm X was trying to express.