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Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Sandra Cisneros

Decent Essays

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

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