Both Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X devote an extensive amount of detail to describing the processes by which they learned to read and write, and, as important, the obstacles that they confronted in order to do so. Douglass explains that he had to acquire his reading and writing skills surreptitiously and, in one of the important quotes from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” regarding literacy, it is said, He “had no regular teacher” (para. 1), and his owner and his mistress consider slavery and education to be incompatible. Douglass equates illiteracy with living in a “mental darkness” (para. 1), and from an early age, he devotes himself to learning first how to read and then how to write by appealing to the kindness and the egos of young white boys, whom he challenges to word duels. Just as with Malcolm X, Douglass thrills at the challenges of learning to read and write and sees this as part of the road to his salvation from the “mental darkness” that once enslaved him. Similarly, Malcolm X responds to his intense passion to learn to read by creating the conditions that made such learning possible despite challenging circumstances. While in prison, Malcolm X teaches himself to read by going through the dictionary page by page. In order to concretize what he has learned, he copies every single page, and years later, he can recall words and images that astonished him. He explained in one of the important quotes from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X“, “I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn” (para. 6). Both of Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass understood the power of language and as their progressed toward their goals of fluency, each was amazed at his ability and in awe at the opportunities afforded by such skills.

Both Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X sense that words can be powerful agents of both a personal as well as a vast social change. In their autobiographies, both men offer homage to the texts that opened their minds and shaped their perspectives on social conditions and politics. Douglass is deeply moved by an exchange between a slave and his master in The Columbian Orator; Malcolm X is equally provoked by a number of books on a wide range of subjects. He starts with a history of Africans and African Americans, acknowledging the influence of seminal texts such as  The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B DuBois and Woodson’s Negro History. Then, he branches out and begins to learn about oppression throughout the world; the historical and sociological texts that he reads give him a broad social consciousness that shaped his political thoughts and actions. By harnessing the power of the written word and literacy, both Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass are able to understand their lives within the context of the experiences of others and can thus go on to share with others this same gift.

Between these two essays, both men also recognize that white people in positions of power find their command of language to be threatening and both writers also recognize that becoming educated makes them the targets of fury and outrage. Douglass describes his otherwise kind mistress in one of theimportant quotes from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as “rush[ing] at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch[ing] from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension” (para. 2) as he is caught learning to read the same books her children do. Similarly,  Malcolm X was fully aware of his verbal agility, observing that he was “the most articulate hustler out there [on the streets],” (para. 3). Yet he is humbled by the realization that when it came to writing, he was bereft of the skills necessary to convey his ideas as convincingly as he knew he was capable of. He acknowledges that speech is a crucial part of how people perceive and relate to one another, and he states that “Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade” (para. 3).

Ultimately, as this thesis statement for “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and Frederick Douglass narratives makes clear, both Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X convey how crucial the processes of learning how to read and write were to their personal development and the definition of their social consciousness and their role in the abolition and civil rights movements, respectively. Words, they explain, have the power to move people, transform people and, more importantly, to liberate them. Malcolm X explains that “I never had been so truly free in my life” (para. 11) and“reading had changed forever the course of my life…. [T]he ability to read awoke inside me some long dor­mant craving to be mentally alive” (para. 40).The persistent importance and centrality of both of these works to African American literature, in particular, and American literature, in general, affirm the authors’ conclusions. Reading and writing become agents for personal and social liberation, as ideas are learned, shared, and acted upon.

Other articles in our Literature Archives related to this topic include : Freedom, Liberty, and Meaning in the Slave Narrative: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Olaudah Equiano  •   Opposing Representations of Christianity in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass   •     The Incompatibility of Education and Slavery in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass    •   Analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes    •    The Role of Education and Literacy in Slave Narratives (Douglass, Washington, Equiano)    •     Slavery in America’s South : Implications and Effects

With Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” providing the backdrop for this discussion about heritage and identity, these themes will be further explored by examining Anna Lisa Raya’s essay “It’s Hard Enough Being Me,” and Amy Tan’s narrative “Fish Cheeks. ” It should be noted that all three of these pieces are written from the perspective of youth and although the authors are writing in retrospect, the central theme throughout all of them is that for young people that are different than the “norm” (white) the search for identity is quite taxing.

In the three pieces discussed here, “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes and “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” by Anna Lisa Raya, there seems to be no way for these young people to find a place for themselves that embraces their cultural identity while at the same time integrates them into white American society. When set against the backdrop of Langston Hughes’ poem about attempting to reconcile white American ideals with his cultural reality, both essays by Tan and Raya can be better understood as rants against the isolation that comes about when a young person feels they must “decide” and choose one cultural identity or another.

In many ways, this poem by Langston Hughes offers the most reassuring message because instead of floundering with identity issues, he simply states a few rather angry thoughts about how his work for his English class will be received. He wonders if it will be “tainted” by a color of its own and remarks on the idea that others reading it might wonder if, just because he is not of the same ethnic background as the majority, he has the same thoughts, interests, emotions, or feelings. Again, this presents the “great divide” of youth growing up on the cusp of both their “true” cultural identity versus the one designated by white American society.

There is a definite sense of isolation and loneliness in Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” which is both directly stated and implicit. He mentions “I am the only colored student in my class” which immediately isolates him but there are also other suggestions of loneliness such as when he follow the above statement with the details of a solitary trip back to his room where he writes. One does not get the impression that anyone else is present either at his lodgings or with him on his trip and by the time the next stanza begins, “It is not easy to know what is true for you or me” the sense of seclusion in solidified in the obscurity of a line about how many people do not know one another. When Langston Hughes states in his poem “Theme for English B” that “I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like / the same things other folks like who are other races. / So will my page be colored that I write?” he hits on an important point that is carried through in all of the works mentioned above: that there is the sense that there is some great divide between people of non-White or non-American that cannot be crossed, that somehow these differences might cause one to question if the author likes different things just because of an ethnic difference or even more importantly, that their difference “taints” everything. When Hughes suggests that his paper might “be colored” he is making this difference seem even more pronounced.

For the other authors in this discussion, the same theme is continued. Anna Lisa Raya feels as though everything she does, simply because of ethnicity might have to smack of “Latin-ness” just as Amy Tan in her essay wishes to erase all pf her cultural markers to hide the “taint” of her culture that she perceives at the Christmas dinner. The fact remains that these are all young people looking to strike a balance between the truths of their identity against the powerful forces of the dominant white American culture. Since all of these pieces are written in retrospect from childhoods in which the struggle between this cultural and ethnic “truth” was constantly battling with notions of what they should be to conform to American society, there is a subtler theme of isolation. None of the authors make reference to other people they interact with meaningfully outside of their own culture and this suggests that part of the trouble of seeking an identity is based in this feeling of loneliness.

Isolation because of a difference in cultural identity is also a theme expressed in “It’s Hard Enough Being Me.” The very title alone indicates that for anyone—even they are white and American is difficult enough and when she claims that “it’s hard enough” to be her, she is stating that throwing the difference in culture into the mix only makes the quest for identity even more difficult. Like the speaker in Hughes’ poem (whom the reader can fairly assume is Hughes himself) Raya is isolated and struggling to mediate her cultural differences, or at least what she perceives they should be, and her attempts to fit into the upper-crust, mostly white and American social structure away from her home and family. For Anna Lisa Raya, her struggle in searching for an identity became more complex when she moved away from her native Los Angeles and came to New York to attend the prestigious Columbia University. As she began searching for identity it became clear to her that even though she had been labeled a “Latina” she couldn’t write or speak Spanish, did not know how to salsa dance, nor did she even know anything about Mexican history. While in the end she is able to reconcile her identity crisis by remembering that it is important not to let other’s perceptions of who she should be not get in her way, she went through a difficult time and felt as though she was a “sell out” to her culture. Raya’s essay reveals the pressures put on young people to conform to a cultural ideal and although she is able to figure out in the end that its important for her to please herself and be happy with being a woman of an interesting heritage and not feeling as though it was necessary for her to take on all the trappings of what society feels is the proper way to be “Latina.” In order to emphasize her point about the way Americans view Latinos, she makes a point of using the derogatory term “spic” to indicate that she has, just by proxy of being surrounded by white American culture, picked up on some of the more negative associations of being Latino.

Breaking the unapologetic tone of Hughes’ poem and deviating from the confusion and veiled anger in Raya’s, Amy Tan’s essay “Fish Cheeks” takes on the language and tone of a young frustrated teenager who is mortified at her own culture. She relates the story of a Christmas in which they had a white minister over to their house with their blond son whom Amy Tan had a crush on. The awkwardness of her teenage years are made even worse by the “embarrassing” behavior of her family which makes her want to “disappear” which is a significant statement because she not only wants to disappear from existence at that moment, she wishes for her whole culture to disappear and meld into that of the white dinner guests. “When I found out that my parents had invited the minister’s family over for Christmas dinner, I cried. What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas?” she laments. The fact that she uses the word “shabby” indicates how she views her own culture’s celebrations and when she says they’ll be having “Chinese food” it is with distaste and embarrassment. Unlike Hughes, she is not at all proud to state her place and rather wishes to become white herself so she can be more American and not have Robert look at her as though she were so different, so alien. At the beginning of the essay, she claims in one of the important quotes from “Fish Cheeks”, “For Christmas I prayed for this blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American nose” which shows that none of her desires for identity were based in her Chinese culture. She is embarrassed when her father burps to show her enjoyed his meal and cringes as her family eats a whole fish, even with the eyes bulging out, and she notices with horror that her blond guest has a perpetual look of disgust on his face. One feels the narrator’s pain as she is humiliated and even the message at the end is positive—that her mother cooked all foods that she liked and tried to teach her a lesson—loses its power because this is a merely an observation in hindsight. Through the pain and easy embarrassment of youth it is difficult for her to see the message and in many ways, this essay is more about the problems of identity multicultural children face rather than about a happy and wise message at the end.

It is clear that all of these authors are isolated by their culture in one way or another. Anna Lisa Raya is isolated within her culture because she feels there are invisible boundaries set up to confine and define her as “Latina,” Langston Hughes is isolated because of his culture, because he feels that the expectations from him are supposed to be different to the rest of his white class and teacher, and Tan is isolated by her dreams of shedding these cultural bounds and integrating completely into the dominant culture. While all of these works have a somewhat hopeful message at the end—in short, that the authors should not care what anyone thinks and just express themselves unhindered—the fact remains that these is a lasting pain suffered by these writers. American culture, especially in recent decades, has made great efforts to “reach out” to what they term, in politically-correct fashion, “minorities” yet even still, one can imagine that the problems associated with identity Tan, Hughes, and Raya faced are still common among children today. In a culture like America’s—one dominated by images and messages attempting to define people, particularly on television, it is always going to be difficult for these young people. Through stories and poems like those mentioned it can only be hoped that we begin to realize that identity is a tough thing to come by for any young person, and is made even more complex by the difference in ethnicity or culture.

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes  •   American Literature in Historical Context : 1865 to Roosevelt  •   The Full Extent of Damaging Representations of Women in the Media   •   Realism in American Literature

To Frederick Douglass, freedom and liberty remained vague concepts for a great deal of time. Some of his first realizations about what it is not, namely the gross inequities of plantation life formed the basis for his later struggle to emerge from slavery. For instance, he realizes from an early age when he explained in one of the important quotes from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass : An American Slave,  “I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell his birhday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same priviledge.” Instead of merely pointing out the fact that he did not know the details of his background is a structurally vital part of the narrative, but Douglass takes this observation one step further by remarking upon the difference between the white and black children. Instead of merely accepting this difference, he is keenly aware of the inequality of even the most minor details. These descriptions of inequality plague the first half of the book and the reader realizes the “worth” of a slave when Douglass states, “We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married ands single, were ranked with horses, sheep and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (51). It is clear that Douglass wants his readers to see the humanity of both himself and other slaves and thus before he can begin the “freedom seeking” portion of the narrative this is necessary foregrounding.

For Frederick Douglass, there were several routes that appeared to be the most direct one to reach a sense of freedom and liberty. At first, he is convinced that the key to freedom is as simple as moving to an urban area. He remarks, “A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty enacted on the plantation” (38). Later, he comes to find that while the conditions may be slightly better there is still a great deal of injustice. He then begins to think that his education will be the secret to freedom and liberty and although he endeavors to learn as much as possible, he begins to doubt whether or not he was correct. At one point he states, “I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out” (47). In the end, these elements of freedom—becoming urban and educated—led to his final act of rebellion, which he hoped would bring freedom. He engages in a fight with is cruel master. He can no longer stand the combination of inequality with his newfound sense of education and urban knowledge. He states, “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free” (70). He gets away and becomes a free man, only to realize that these is still no such thing as complete freedom for a black man, even in the North. He recalls, “There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousand of my own brethren—children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my sad condition” (79). For Douglass, freedom and liberty had to be obtained through a combination of factors, with education at the top, followed closely by a rebellious spirit and access to friendly Northerners and the community of urban blacks who were able to live more progressive lives away from the plantation. Without this combination, there might not be success.

According to one scholar, freedom for a slave in the South such as Douglass meant being willing to act in a revolutionary manner. When one considers this, the fact that he hit his master as well as taught himself to read and write are both certainly revolutionary. “As Douglass proclaimed in the Narrative: ‘In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death’. The slaves’ resistance literally and figuratively embodied the founder’s challenge. To Douglass, they appropriated and proceeded beyond Henry’s words to match their own actions at great bodily risk.” In the end, for Douglass, freedom meant the ability to think freely, to have an education, to be able to work for regular wages and support oneself, and most importantly, to be human—to be viewed in the same way whites viewed themselves.

Traditions in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker are important to both Dee and her mother, but they have different meanings. For Dee’s mother and her sister Maggie, traditions are built on a foundation of inherited objects and ways of thinking while for her daughter, traditions are something that no longer have everyday use and are corrupted by history. Most importantly, in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, these traditions are all based in a learning and education and the way of thinking possessed by each character has shaped the traditions they rely on. In terms of this analysis and summary of themes in “Everyday Use” one should note that that these two ways of thinking about African American traditions create the tension in the short story and although there is no “correct” viewpoint about these traditions expressed, the set up of the story allows the reader to consider both sides.

The plot of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker itsekf Even from the beginning of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, it is clear there is a tension between Dee and her family because of her outside education. She is no longer tied to the world of everyday usefulness (working around the land and the house) but is more related to the world of education and a more ethereal kind of usefulness. For her mother, the situation is quite the opposite. Her knowledge is useful and grounded in her everyday tasks. She gives a summary of her farm-related accomplishments and brags of being able to kill a hog like a man and can cook and take care of the homestead. Because the reader gets the sense that she is steeped in an educational tradition that emphasizes usefulness, she is at odds with the educational traditions of her daughter, Dee, who has been to school away from home. This tension between educational traditions is one of the main themes in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and is apparent after Dee’s mother details what she knows about (usually related to farm tasks) but when she discusses her daughter’s educational traditions, she speaks almost disdainfully, saying, “She used to read to us without pity, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know.” To her mother, Dee’s knowledge is foreign and is tinged with an element of danger since it includes “lies” and “other folks’ habits” and worse yet, it makes her mother and sister, who have a different tradition of learning feel “ignorant and trapped” with knowledge that her mother feels is not necessary.

In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, traditions based in learning extend far beyond ways of thinking about issues or objects, they also inform the way each character expresses her outer identity. For instance, Dee’s mother admits that she is a solid and “big boned” woman who was built for work which her daughter, who has been around more educated people, does not find attractive since it does not suit her ideal of what a modern black woman should look like. Her mother is aware of this, saying that if she were to appear on television, she would be, as she describes in one of the important quotes from “Everyday Use”by Alice Walker, “the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake.” In other words, because of her tradition of education in the modern (read as “white-influenced” world) Dee would find that her mother is does not fit what her education has taught her is attractive. Again, there is the traditional tension between what is beautiful and attractive at odds with what is practical and useful. There is no right or wrong way for a person to be, but the author is showing how these traditions are at odds. To Dee, coming home with her big gold hoop earrings and bright long dresses is a demonstration that her traditions have changed. Her mother finds it difficult to get over this change saying, “At sixteen she had a style of her own and knew what style was” and she also admits that, “Often I fought off the temptation to shake her.” Just as with the case of the quilts, her mother thinks they should be useful and not decorative while her daughter, with her different educational traditions believes that they should not go to use and should stand for something.

          The most prime example of traditions creating tension as a result of education in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is that of the name change Dee takes on after she finds fault with her mother’s tradition of naming children after relatives. When she tells her mother about her name change, Dee, now Wangero, says, “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.” Her mother does not know what to say to this although she does try to accept it. For her, names are based on a tradition in which there was not a lot of thought about a name and they were used as something that was useful since they connected one family member to another. When considering her choice of “Dee”  Wangero’s mother thinks back to Beg Dee, whom her daughter was named after and says, “That’s about as far back as I can trace it…Though in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the branches.” Again, this is a prime example of educational traditions at odds since Dee/Wangero has been taught to consider the social and political implications of a name and to connect importance to these while her mother’s traditions have relied on naming children after other family members.

         In any of the cases highlighted above in this essay, it is never clear if the Alice Walker in “Everyday Use” is trying to express the belief that one set of traditions is better than the other. Instead, it seems that she is trying to show how one’s education influences thoughts about traditions. This demonstrates that traditions are mutable and can be changed over time if the right influences exist. It also seems to show that traditions are rooted in everyday use and thus just as the thesis statement for this Walker story and, for that matter,  for this summary of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker contends, both the frame and meaning of the story are contained in the title. For Wangero, her uses are served by thinking critically about her past since she is not actively required for work on her family’s land. For her mother, however, these thoughts serve no use and it is best, because of her setting and influences, to focus on that which is conducive to everyday use. By the end of the story, the title takes on more significance as we see that traditions are rooted in their use in a given situation and that they are prone to change.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Existentialism in “The Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker •  Jazz by Toni Morrison : The Symbolic Significance of the Title  •  The Role of Oppression in “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston   •   Analysis and Summary of “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston  •  Analysis and Summary of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston  •   Analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

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