Homemade Education

Malcolm X "A Homemade Education" is a chapter in The Autobiography of Malcolm X The chapter details the formative experiences Malcolm X had while in prison, teaching himself how to read, write, and also be critically aware of what he was reading and writing. "A Homemade Education" is important to the development of Malcolm X's ideas and his character. Learning how to read and write in prison empowered the author, and enabled him to become the powerful public speaker and influential political activist that he became.

The chapter also reveals some of the rhetorical devices and strategies Malcolm X uses throughout the autobiography. The chapter begins with X stating plainly, "It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a homemade education." Just as Elijah Muhammad was having a great impact on Malcolm X's thought processes and worldview, the desire to communicate to Elijah Muhammad motivated him to become highly literate.

He also notes that Bimbi inspired him, because Bimbi "had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him." From the outset, Malcolm X is drawing his connections to the sources of influence on him. The literary impact of the passage is to add context to the homemade education X forges for himself in prison. Malcolm X soon adopts an almost didactic tone. He wants to be for the reader what Elijah Muhammad and Bimbi were to him: coaches, role models, leaders.

As he reflects on his self-development, the author wants readers also know that wherever they are now is not necessarily where they need to be in ther future. A person can change his or her destiny, but sometimes a mentor or role model is a necessary catalyst for change. Describing his reading of the dictionary and the time he spent learning to read, Malcolm X seems to be guiding the reader to do the same.

He is offering to the reader the opportunity to receive a homemade education, which is an education that is not confined to the traditional academic institutions that once excluded African-Americans from entering their doors. Humor also plays an important role for Malcolm X in this chapter. For example, he writes, "But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese." Malcolm X uses humor a few other times in the chapter.

The author begins the narrative in the chapter by making fun of his street slang, or jive talk. "How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say it, something such as, "Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad - " The content of the slang is dated when read now, but the reader gets the gist of what Malcolm X is saying.

He can be in command of street-level communication, but he needs to master the art of communicating in different social sectors if he is to have any influence on the world. This seems to be the crux of Malcolm X's argument in "A Homemade Education," which is to emphasize the power of communication. Malcolm X also uses imagery to underscore his argument and bring it alive for the reader.

When he discusses his reading the dictionary, for example, Malcolm X recalls the first word because aardvark begins with a double a, and then describes the creature, which happens to be African. "The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tallied, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants." He also describes how he came to teach himself one word at a time.

Using the first person and a familiar tone helps Malcom X endear himself with the reader. He is on the reader's level. It's not ask if Malcolm X is describing how he learned how to read, while in prison, one word at a time from a dictionary, only to use scholarly jargon to tell the tale. To do so would have destroyed his argument, which is directed at the common person. Malcolm X knows how to speak to the common person.

As he already mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, Malcolm X is streetwise. He "had been the most articulate hustler out there - I had commanded attention when I said something." Maintaining a familiar tone of voice enhances the author's credibility. Malcolm X might lack the traditional type of credibility that matters in the white world, in the elite dominant culture. But he possesses and oozes the power of the street.

Given that Malcolm X is not at all interested in pandering to the white elite to ask for some kind of reconciliation or negotiation, the author needs to keep his street credentials -- his creds. Using the first person pronoun as well as the second person pronoun, and maintaining an informal tone, achieves the author's rhetorical goals. Unlike his counterpart, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X does not rely on a traditional rhetorical structure like the Aristotelian one with pathos, ethos, and logos.

There are certainly elements of the Aristotelian rhetorical structure in "A Homemade Education," though. Logos is the most obvious one, as the bulk of the book chapter is devoted to the topic of words. Malcolm X also uses careful reasoning to show how methodical he was in learning how to read systematically, in the most basic way possible once a rudimentary foundation has been established.

Using ethos, Malcolm X bonds with the reader as a man of the people, which is an ironic but strong form of ethical credibility in his case. Malcolm X also links himself, and his motivation to read and communicate better, with Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad had, to Malcolm X's eyes, great credibility at the time. "A Homemade Education" has little serious pathos, but the author does make an emotional appeal. The traditional Greek rhetorical strategy is certainly not a prerequisite for a good argument.

Viewed out of context, "A Homemade Education" stands alone as a rallying cry for literacy and a champion of all types.