Malcolm X's Literacy Sponsors

Again, my audience now is my friends back home in Jacksonville attending different colleges. This reading is about Malcolm X's literacy sponsors.  Malcolm X is a Muslim minister and human rights activist.  In the first reading I learned that a literacy sponsor was a person who motivated your literacy, however, Malcolm X's sponsors were not mostly humans.  He was in prison when he began reading and didn't have access to certain positive literacy sponsors that we do.  Instead Malcolm X turned to book, mostly negative ones.  He read mostly about race and segregation which caused him to "misappropriate" their intentions.  Think about a time when you "misappropriated" your literacy sponsors intentions and reflect.

Malcolm X had many literacy sponsors but they were much different than most peoples.  The major reason for his differences is because he learned to read while in prison.  This gave him to have a shortage of sponsors, which caused him to turn to alternatives.  His main literacy sponsor was the dictionary.   He copied every word and definitions to learn as many words as he could to help him better understand books.  Once he memorized many words he was able to use books and readings as his sponsors.  Since he read so much it became easier after time and he was able to grasp harder topics.  There were a few human sponsors Malcolm had including a man, named Bimbi, who he met in prison, who inspired Malcolm’s passion to learn.  There were also instructors in the prison who taught classes in the prison. 

            While learning from his sponsors, Malcolm X did sometimes misappropriate their intentions.  He seemed to ready mostly negative books about segregation.  I feel it gave him a negative outlook on life causing him to make bad decisions.  Without the help of more human sponsors he wasn’t able to get the positive outlook on literacy. 

            A time that I misappropriated one of my literacy sponsors intentions was in one of my high school writing classes.  I realized, after taking my ENC 1101 class that I used writing rules to strictly.  My literacy sponsors in high school taught many rules that I should use in my writing, however, I thought of them to often which hindered my writing creativity.  After learning that I shouldn’t focus so much on writing rules I knew that I took what my high school sponsors were saying to seriously.  I began to improve my writing after I focused more on creativity rather than the rules.