The exert from Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography was very hard to read. True, the writing style of the 1700's was very different from the writing style of today, but it was still very difficult to read. His run on sentences made my eyes water and my brain go numb. There is no doubt that Franklin was a smart man - it just seems to me that maybe writing wasn't his strong foot. Not only did he have a problem with run on sentences, the point of his exert was hard to find. The reader didn't know that he was writing about how he learned to write well until almost the end (and my attention span was very short by that point).
Franklin's exert and Malcom X' essay are very different. Though Franklin's exert has a certain eloquence about it, Malcom X' paper was much easier to read. Malcom went straight to the point and gave many great examples in his learning process. Franklin's was a bit harder to find. Though both men learned to read and write in very different ways, I would much rather read Malcom X any day.
I love your post title! Yes, Malcolm X is much easier for us to read, and yet consider Ben Franklin trying to understand what Malcolm X describes as his street hustler language--pretty comical, no?
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