3 In a bid to increase his knowledge and improve his skills , desperate Malcolm X devised a scheme . He turned to books, believing this would be beneficial . However, when he tried to read serious books on his own, he was distressed as he didn't know most of the words. " They might as well have been in Chinese , " he wrote. He skipped all the words he didn't know and then would end up with no clue as to what the book was about. " I became frustrated , " Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography , speaking of his inadequate language skills . 4 Malcolm X ' s considerable frustration at his inability to read and write launched him on a quest to overcome his deficiencies . He said, " I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary — to study , to learn some words. " And he was lucky enough to reason also that he should try to improve his handwriting . " It was sad . I couldn't even write in a straight line, " he told us. These ideas together moved him to appeal to the prison authorities for some paper and pencils .