Reading and writing are skills we often take for granted. We read signs, write notes, type, or things in the like, everyday without noticing. Like walking, it comes to us very naturally. Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X did not have this luxury and unlike Sandra Cisneros, the process of learning to read and write was very difficult. What makes Sandra Cisneros fit in with the others is the symbolism reading and writing had for her. The symbolism of reading and writing for them is what ties these three people together. Frederick Douglass was an African American slave, he was owned and worked for the Hughes family. In his time, reading and writing was illegal for slaves, but his mistress started teaching him anyway. He speaks very fondly of …show more content…
She rewrites this statement several times to clarify the meaning it has to her and says, “All of these had everything to do with who I am today.”(first paragraph of “only daughter”). Reading and writing was not a challenge so to speak as it was for Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, but it was the process of what she did with that skill that was difficult. Ever since she was in elementary school she knew she wanted to go to college, she shared this with her father and he was pleased. She misunderstood understanding and states later, “What I didn’t realize was that my father thought college was good for girls for finding a husband.”(third paragraph of “only daughter”). She says that all her writing was for him, for his approval, but the ironic part of this is that he barely read anything at all, and not a word of english. He worked with his hands and read things like magazines and comics, nothing too lengthy and hard. She says he would always tell them, “ “Use this,” my father said, tapping his head, “and not this,” showing us those hands. He always looked tired when he said it.” (tenth paragraph of “only daughter”). See he believed she was smart and could make something of herself but that was not the goal he expected her to reach. He was expecting her to find a husband and make a family, this was not the goal in her mind. She wanted to become a writer and make a career for herself. He wouldn’t interrupt her with her work except for the occasional “ What are you writing?” but she wanted him to interrupt, she felt at times that he didn’t care what she did as long as she got a husband in the end. This frustrated her beyond belief along with the fact that he would always say that he had “seven sons” but in spanish it translates to that but it really just means seven children. She took this to heart and mentions it several times to get the message across that she was offended. She later had one of her
Born into a life of slavery, Frederick Douglass overcame a boatload of obstacles in his very accomplished life. While a slave he was able to learn how to read and write, which was the most significant accomplishment in his life. This was significant, not only because it was forbidden for a slave to read due to the slaveholders wanting to keep them ignorant to preserve slavery, but because it was the starting point for Frederick to think more freely and more profound. Frederick Douglass then taught other slaves how to read and write because he believed and taught “Once you learn to read you will be forever free” (Frederick Douglass). This man was an astonishing individual who
Frederick Douglass was a very firm believer in equality in all people no matter your race or skin color. He witnessed a black women get beaten because one of the slave owners wanted her and she had a boyfriend, he could not doing anything to help the women so he ran somewhere he could not witness what was happening. She deserved to be with whoever she want to but since she was black she got treated differently from the
Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Sandra Cisneros are all similar in ways they learned. But, they were very different from the ways they were grown up or they’re backround. They wanted to learn to read and write for reasons, and learned to in different ways. They all had backrounds distinct to each others but it seemed they were all poor. They were also “jailed” both literally and forms of it.
Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X both experienced teaching themselves how to read in similar ways. They both recognized in order to be free from their situation, you must be free in the mind. You see, once you accept your situation, then you become empowered. That hunger for literacy was as Frederick Douglass states; “In teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.” Malcolm X states “I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote.”
Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were African American who at their best struggled to be successful and to forge something better out of their lives. Briefly, Frederick Douglass was born in 1818 in a slave family, and his family lineage was doomed to be slaves and nothing more, but faced many obstacles from the white in acquiring education (Douglass 100). On the other hand, Malcolm X was born in 1928, he was not a slave, but his family was forced to move several times to different areas due to racism and discrimination by the whites (Malcolm 254). Hence it is crucial to evaluate the way compare and contrast why they acquired substandard substandard education, Malcolm X being
Fredrick Douglas was born a slave. In his narrative, Mr. Douglass explains how his mistress took an interest in him. Mrs. Auld would teach Mr. Douglass how to read, but was forbidden to continue by her husband, Mr. Auld. Mr. Auld explained to his wife, teaching a slave to read and write would make him unmanageable and unfit to be a slave. It was at this very moment Frederick Douglas learned whites held slaves back by depriving them of an education and literacy.
Douglass Frederick is one of the African-American political leaders of the movement. He was born as a slave who was famous reformer, writer, and polemicist. Douglass has been devoting abolitionism and the struggle for black rights in his all life. His article is talking about a chattel catlike study English by himself, but
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. He had a strong hatred toward slavery; not just because he was a slave, but because he thought it to be inhumane and cynical. Douglass knew from a young age that he was an abolitionist. He believed slavery was a disease that needed to be eradicated. He ran away from his slave life in Maryland and headed to New York to be with other
Have you ever felt trapped? Like someone or something does not let you be yourself. You want to be able to just say or write exactly how you feel, but you can’t because if you did you would make the situation worse for yourself. It’s hard. It’s hard when there is hundreds of thousands of people that are going through the same situation as you,but you’re the only that knows what is actually going on. It’s hard when you want to reach out to people to help them but you feel that if you did it wouldn’t get through to them. It’s hard when when you can’t be yourself with the only person that you need approval of to be happy with yourself.
Frederick Douglass is a former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and the eloquent orator. He mentioned in his autobiography that he is a slave who learned to read and write. He prepared this document because he wanted to inform people the cruelty of slavery and the hardships he went through. He wanted to tell people the horrible relationships of a slave and a master
Frederick Douglass was one of the smartest slaves there was he knew how to read and he would every chance he got. Douglass was reading
Douglass lived in the slave times. It was illegal to a slave to read and write. Any slave caught reading or writing would be severely punished or even killed. Slave owners felt that if they learn they will soon rebel and start to fight back. Douglass even grew up not even knowing his own age. His master’s wife is what
Frederick Douglass’ biography revolves around the idea of freedom. After seeing a traumatizing incident as a child, Douglass slowly begins to realize that he is not a free human being, but is a slave owned by other people. He is surrounded by a society that devalues him and people like him, and systematically worked to keep them ignorant and submissive. In this society, it is made clear that no slave is special, and everyone is replaceable. Rather than accept this, Douglass struggles to maintain what little autonomy he was allowed to have. When his one of his masters, Thomas Auld, bans his mistress, Sophia, from teaching Douglass how to read, Douglass learned from the young boys on the street. His biography shows him transforming from an ignorant child into his older, more learned self.
Over the 1800’s many people were against slavery, one of which was Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery around 1817-1818. At age 12, he learned to read and write, taught by his master’s wife. Douglass tried to escape slavery twice before he succeeded. On his third attempt, he had help escaping by Anna Murray, a free black woman. They fell in love, married, and
She later goes and talks about writing and how it empowered her. She talked about how she wrote letters to her son's everyday. She believes that the written word gives us the ability to share our experiences with others after we are long gone. In this way I think that we are able to get rid of the master narrative. As people of color we are obligated to write our experiences in order to enlighten people of what it means to be who we are. By doing so we challenge the image that is given to us by the media because after all the pen is mightier than the