How Literature Affects People's Lives

In Chapter 50 of Literacy Narratives, there are five different narrative. In the first narrative, a girl talks about how she is of Mexican decent and how she barely spoke a word of Spanish. She tried to go through her life acting as if she was Caucasian. Then, she learns to embrace her heritage. In the next story, a slave tells his story of how he wanted to learn to read and write so bad. He would make friends with the white children, give them bread, then ask them to teach him. After doing this, he finally accomplished his dream of knowing how to be literate. The third, and most interesting story, was about Malcolm X. He tells how he copied the dictionary in jail everyday and soon became a man who loved books and reading. Jail had turned him into a very wise man. The fourth story is about an author or novels, children's books and essays. She talks about how she had to use two kinds of English; the proper way and then a sort of broken English. Her mother barely speaks English, so Amy Tan had to talk into a shortened version of English. She talked very proper with everyone else. The fifth and final story tells how a boy started to become interested in science after reading. He would make up elaborate stories and tell them. He then became to love science fiction stories. All of these stories talk about how literature has affected people's lives and how in some ways, even changed people's lives.