Sophinos 1
Xavier Sophinos
Professor Eaton
Academic Writing 110
27 August 2025
Practice
In Malcolm X’s “Literacy Behind Bars” he recounts his experience getting educated in
prison. He corrects the false assumption that the prison was Charles Town prison in Boston,
where his friend Bimbi inspired him to start reading. However, due to X’s lack of education past
the 8th grade, he struggled to decipher anything from the books he read. Explaining his
difficulties, he says, “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.” (X, 1).
To solve this, he got hold of a dictionary along with a tablet and pencils. With these, he
started copying down every single page, one by one, and reading each page over and over. He
would also review the ones he didn't remember from previous days of study. This practice
improved both his vocabulary and his handwriting. By reading the dictionary, he also became
well versed in history, describing the book as “like a miniature encyclopedia.” (X, 2).
After copying the entire dictionary, he moved back to books which he could finally
understand. He was constantly reading, enjoying is so much that, despite being in prison, he says
he “never had been so truly free in my life.” (X, 3). He read so much that he would go so far as
to read on the floor after his cell lights went out so he could read under the glow of a nearby
lantern. By pretending to be asleep when a guard walked by, he could do this for hours past
midnight.
Sophinos 2
X’s love of reading became incredibly influential to him. He realized that deep down he
yearned to be as literate as he was now. He is so well spoken that many people assume that he
must have received a college degree. His passion for reading, he explains, was not from a want
of a college degree. To him, college had too many distractions to get the kind of education he did
in a prison. But what his reading did help him achieve was knowledge to help the Civil Rights
Movement. Instead, he cites his curiosity as the cause.
Works Cited
Sophinos 3
X, Malcolm. “Literacy Behind Bars.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with readings and
handbook, edited by Richard Bullock, Deborah Bertsch, Maureen Daly Goggin, and
Francine Weinberg, W.W.Norton & Company, 2022, pp. 1-4.