When reading a good book, you might find yourself so engrossed in the book that everything else disappears around you. You find yourself paying more attention to the book than anything else. This is the power of reading. No matter what genre it is fiction or nonfiction while reading, at least one sentence is going to pull you in and want to keep reading more.

This is precisely what happened to Malcolm X. Malcolm X from the start was interested in knowledge from when he stated, “It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison…Bimbi made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi has always taken charge of any conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him”. Malcolm was always interested in gaining knowledge, had trouble with it in the beginning but continued. When he continued, he learned how to read and write. This opened up a new world for him. He was so captivated with literature that even while incarcerated, he felt free. He had stated, “In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.” This shows how strong the relationship between literature and freedom is, although some don’t realize it, literature is powerful. What this narrative suggests about the relationship between literature and freedom is that reading, especially if you’re someone that never believed in literature and the benefits of it or just never got a chance with it, unchains you and sets you free to learn about anything you want. Literature opens and expands your mind in a way that you would’ve never thought possible. It gives you a sense of being “free.” Knowledge is power, and the more literature you read, the more knowledge you will have.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.