Chapter 11 - Summary, The Autobiography Of Malcolm X | The Autobiography of Malcolm X -Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Saved

• So Malcolm writes to Elijah Muhammad. Surprise! He writes back and sends five dollars along with his letter.
• His family also sends letters telling him to pray. This is a problem because Malcolm has too much pride to get down on his knees, and when he finally does he has no idea what to say.
• Eventually he gets the hang of it and his whole personality changes. It’s like he's a totally different person from the New York hustler he used to be. Soon enough, he's sending letters to all of his old hustler friends. But nobody writes back.
• In the course of writing his letters Malcolm gets frustrated because he can't express all of the things that he wants to tell his friends and Mr. Muhammad. So he decides it's time to fix that problem.
• He's been reading for a while, but he doesn't know a lot of the words in the books. Normally, he just skips over them, but reading this way hasn't gotten him very far.
• Malcolm decides it's time for drastic measures. He decides to copy the dictionary. That's right, the whole thing. Obviously, he grew up in a time before the Internet. Otherwise he would have been distracted by Facebook before he got halfway through the A entries.
• Once he gains all of this new vocabulary, Malcolm reads books every single free moment of his day. Even after lights out he struggles to read by the light of the prison corridor. Dude is dedicated.
• Since Elijah Muhammad preached that black people had been left out of the history books, Malcolm searches the library for books about black history. And he finds and devours them.
• The next couple of pages are just full of name-dropping. Not the name-dropping that Malcolm used to do of famous black entertainers, but name-dropping of authors, historians, anthropologists, and all the other new information that he's taking in during his reading marathon.
• He doesn't even need Reading Rainbow to tell him how awesome books are. You should totally go read this section, since it's like a mini history lesson in its own right.
• Malcolm tells us that he probably wouldn't have learned so much if he had actually gone to college since he would've been too busy chasing girls. Yeah, we'll have to agree with that. College can be too much fun, but in prison there's nothing else to do but read.
• Besides the reading, the other thing that greatly impacts Malcolm's intellectual life at this time is his participation in the prison's weekly debate program. He'd never even considered speaking in front of people before, but now finds he loves it so much that he does it every chance he gets.
• During a debate, Malcolm suggests that his audience read a certain book. Suddenly, this book disappears from the library. Malcolm swears to devote the rest of his life to speaking what he believes is the truth about white people.
• The next time Reginald visits, Malcolm teaches him all the new stuff that he's learned. But he can't believe it when Reginald says some pretty bad stuff about Elijah Muhammad. He'd been kicked out of the Nation of Islam for improper relations with a lady friend.
• This news throws Malcolm for a loop but, after praying, he sides with Elijah Muhammad and rejects his brother. Reginald's mental health begins to decline, and eventually he ends up in an institution because he believes that he is God.
• At the time, Malcolm believed this was God's retribution against Reginald for acting impurely. Later on, though, he believes that it is just a reflection of the hurt that Reginald felt when his entire family rejected him.
• Back in prison, Malcolm has been reading in the dark so much that he needs to wear glasses. He is sent back to Charlestown prison, which is much more restricted than Norfolk Prison Colony. Even there, though, Malcolm spreads the word of the Nation of Islam.