BEFORE YOU READ
     Before starting to read this article, I had never known who Malcolm X was, or what he did.  Now I know, he was a black male who dropped out of school his eighth grade year, because he was told by a teacher that he could not read, and would not ever be able to become the lawyer he ended up becoming.  He replaced his last name with an "X" symbolizing slaves and how he was called, "Little" by the slave master.  He shares many of the same ideas as Deborah Brandt, and this shows through his writing.  He was assassinated in about 1965.

     In Malcolm X's article, "Learning to Read," he talks about his own personal experience when he was in prison.  He is always reading, and loves to read any chance he gets.  He talks about the British and English, and how they came to have the "opium war."  He speaks on how the Chinese were killed with their own gunpowder, and taken control over at one of their weaker times in history.  He says that no matter who it was, they would never be able to steer him away from a book.  He would even read at night when all he has was a small light that shone in his cell at night. 
    
      The part I most liked about this article was when Malcolm X talks about how he wrote the whole dictionary down in his time at prison.  That takes a lot of time, and shows how dedicated he was as a reader.  It shows how much he wanted to learn, and what he gained from his experience.  I strongly agree with his point that college has too much distractions, and makes it harder for students to read and understand.  There are so many parties, frats, sororities, and socialites that just take too much time away from the actual study in the college life of a student.

BEFORE YOU READ
     When I learned to read, I was about four years old, almost five.  My dad was the first to teach me how to read a book, and my mom was the parent that helped me learn my spelling.  If it was not for my mom teaching me how to spell, and put words together, I would have never been able to pick up so quickly on how to read and write.  If my parents did not teach me how to read small words and sentences at such a young age, I probably would not enjoy reading and writing as much as I do now.

     In Sherman Alexie's article, "The Joy of Reading: Superman and Me," he explains that a superman comic was the first thing he ever learned to read.  He does not remember which one it was, who did what, but he remembers that is what he read.  He talks about the construct of paragraphs being like a fence for different sentences.  He compares this to his family, being seven paragraphs since there are seven people in his family.  It is stated two times in the article that if he was not an Indian child from the reservation he would have probably been considered a prodigy, not an oddity.

     What I mostly enjoyed about this article was that he explains that he was saving himself learning to read.  He loves the fact that he is a smart indian boy, even if his classmates will not own up to it.  He is not afraid to show how smart he is, and will not put on a front just because other do this.

COMPARE
     In both Malcolm's and Alexie's article I have noticed they both come from a very poor family.  Neither of them are expected to go anywhere in life within the reading and writing construct.  They both share similarities to Brandt's article.  They prove that they, unlike the others can make it possible to become smarter and to learn more than expected.  They taught themselves how to read and write, given the conditions in which they lived.

     In Bell Hook's article, "Writing Autobiography," she talks about moments that happened in her past as a small child.  At the start of her autobiography she wants to 'kill the Gloria of her childhood,' but does not know if she can.  She has been struggling for years to write down the events of her childhood.  She thinks it has taken her so long, because she can not emotionally let the happenings go.  She talks about the black man she had an affair with, and the two memories with him that made her go back to her childhood days.  The first is when she talks about him being a smoker, and she was not and did not like to be around the smoke.  This made her think of her Uncle Pete.  She had never really met him, but she remembered him as a smoker, and a tight embrace that she also shared with the man she was with.  In the end of her article, Bell explains that she no longer wants to kill the childhood of 'Gloria,' but has not rescued her, and can live a peaceful life knowing she has come to terms with things that had happened in her past.

COMPARE
     In all three article, I have come to the conclusion that they had all come from poor families, with little to show.  None of them are white Americans.  Malcolm X was a black male who converted to Islam, Alexie was an Indian boy from a reservation, and Hook was a black female.  They all had either had trouble reading in the beginning, or were put down and not expected to have been able to go anywhere with reading or writing.  They all proved this wrong, and learned to read and write, and produce their own short stories, novels, autobiographies, or poems.

     Overall, I enjoyed each article.  My favorite was the first article with Malcolm X.  I found this the most interesting mainly, because I have heard about him, but never knew exactly who he was, what he did, or why he did it.  This article has helped me to better understand who he is, and what he stood for as a person.  I have a lot of respect for him for going to prison, and instead of just sitting around, he betters himself as a person, and proves everyone wrong.  He makes himself a better person than half of the people in America as my personal opinion.