Comparing Articles Written By Malcolm X and Mike Rose

I read Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” first. The title leaves open possibilities of what one might assume the excerpt to actually be about. Originally, I thought the excerpt was going to explain how Malcolm X learned to read. Others might have thought it would be about the importance of learning to read. I suppose that both of those theories would be correct, but what I took the excerpt to represent was an explanation of the reasoning behind his decision to become a civil rights leader. I also assumed the writing was a single article but after reading through it I realized it was an excerpt from Malcolm X’s autobiography.  How his learning to read influenced the view he formed of the world around him through countless hours of reading seems to be the focus of the excerpt.  I feel he eloquently explained his education in the prison system to support his narrative of the entire story he was looking to reveal.

The second read was Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average.” My first impression of the reading spoke to me from the word “Wanna” in the title. I assumed that the author was trying to imply just what he stated in the name of the article. After actually reading Part 1, I realized he was much more than average and that the title itself can easily mislead readers. The details in his writings are exemplary. He explained in vivid detail his surroundings and included a multitude of descriptive facts and behaviors about the people he encountered throughout his time at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic School. I found myself looking up many words such as laryngectomize and platitudinous on merriam-webster.com because I had never heard of them. In fact, those two exact words came up under Google search results for a cha-cha question, “What does laryngectomize and platitudinous mean?” while I was searching for laryngectomize.

Both articles were written in a way that conveyed their messages to the readers. I felt they were both descriptive and kept the readers engaged.  However, the biggest difference I saw was that Mike Rose’s story painted an extremely vivid picture of the people and places around him whereas Malcolm X spent most his time explaining the reading he did. Malcolm X did offer enough details to explain the situation and his surroundings, but Mike Rose left a visual image in the reader’s head that lets the reader get lost in his or her imagination.