Value of My Literacy

The Value of my Literacy

Frederick Douglass values literacy because literacy gave Douglass power to be free, to be his own man. In the essay “Learning to Read and Write”, Frederick Douglass talks about hardship of learning how to read and write as a slave who is not supposed to. After his master forbade his wife from educating Frederick, he understood the value of being literate. In his mind literacy was the only way to escape slavery and being literate would help him improve and change his place in world.

I, as well can relate to Frederick Douglas when it comes to the value of literacy. Years back, while I was living in my native country I was never, ever thinking of the value of literacy. Being college graduated, with decent job, I never had to worry about anything. I thought that was enough. A wake-up call was me arriving in the United States. As an immigrant who never had any knowledge of English language, I knew it was going to be a challenge to try living a better live in the country where the spoken language is English. I was wrong, it was not a challenge, it was disability. I was disabled. I felt like an animal in a cage. The disability to express my feelings and my needs made me feel less and killed my freedom. There was so much I wanted to say and so much I wanted to do, but it was impossible for me. I felt insecure and weak. At first I was sorry for myself, but that sadness slowly turned to anger towards me because i was ignorant teenager who wouldn't listen my mother. She used to say to me, ”Since you have to study Russian language in school, you should start taking private lessons to learn at least some of English. That is the most useful language in the world. Knowing how to speak English you should not find it hard to make others to understand you in case some day you travel to other country.” Thinking I knew better at that time, I refused, telling her: “When will I possibly need either one of these languages? I am not going anywhere.” Every morning I would wake up and with regret, remember my mother's words. After a while, I decided to do something about learning the language. Either I stay passive and continue living as a prisoner, or I start to adapt and learn the language, which would help me in life. With my personality only one of the above mentioned options was acceptable: me adopting and learning the language was the only way out. I started watching more tv shows and started reading newspapers, thinking that would help me learn the basics. I started spending more time in a public, listening to everything that could help me get to my goal. The dictionary was my only friend at that point. Being out there made me realize that as time passed by, I was able to understand more and more. As soon as that struggle ended another began. It took me awhile to get a courage to say something, even if grammatically incorrect. Most of the people around tried