Living With Dyslexia By Jimmy Santiago Baca

How can people communicate with one another? Language is a very important way to express yourself to another person, whether there is a language difference or a barrier, communication can help identify who you are. Questioning yourself, and knowing that there might be something wrong with you, is one of the most unsatisfying feelings ever. There are many people out there in the world who go through the same situation. Some can feel inferior due to whichever enablement they encounter when it comes to language. Others can become empowered if the discovery of language permits them to find an identity. The readings “Living with Dyslexia” by Gareth Cook and “Coming into Language” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, are pieces of writing that discuss some similarities
I know many people who encountered the struggle of dyslexia, but I can truly see that impact on my younger sibling Christopher, and my dear best friend Diana. Diana has been my best friend since fifth grade, and we have been in the same classes ever since until college. She calls me every now and then to tell me how much she is struggling at SAC State, how difficult it is for her to keep up with her grades. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in middle school, and I remember how cruel kids were with her. No one wanted to use her in group projects, or presentations, or in anything, because to them she was dumb. Very similar to Cook, when everyone expected him to fail fast during spelling bees. Besides all the bullying, all she did was smile and at least I thought ignored what they said. When we were in high school, she confessed how awful it was to be so ‘slow’ at everything. It took her three times to pass the English CAHSEE, but she persevered and she did accomplish it. Diana was very patient with herself through it all, and still is. I called her recently to let her know I was using her for this essay, and her response is very similar to Cook’s, “Having dyslexia is not easy, very hard actually, but you must find different alternative strategies to deal with it in a positive way.” In comparison to Diana, Christopher struggles with it
In his early adulthood, he was arrested twice for different reasons. When he was seventeen, he took a book from his job, and was very interested with what the book contained, a historical event from his heritage. He could relate to his culture through this book, and decided to share this excitement with his friends. Baca encountered many prisoners that also read books and who were far interested in literature. He describes his first experience in jail with readings as, “Never had I felt such freedom as in that dormitory. Listening to the words of these writers...Their language was the magic that can liberate me from myself, transform me into another person, transport me to other places far away”(153). On his last imprisonment, he stole a book from some detectives during his shift, and became very intrigued with what he read. He became so inspired yet so addicted to poetry and learned to express himself through language. It came to the point that he wrote about almost anything, expressed his misery and happiness to the ones who listened. Being confined in maximum security and restricted from what surrounded him, he received a book from a person and made his first journal. The prison administrators gave him a hard time, and as time past he could no longer write anymore, all he did was sleep all day. He then realized that what he wrote had meaning, had value, and it did not derive through books, it came