The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(this is the 39th book I've read but it sure isn't the 39th review I've written here! under the cut there's a list of what I've read with links to reviews when I've made them. I have a lot of catching-up to do and will be working backwards as well as forwards.)
(1-15) Assorted
(16) Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
(17) Virginia Hamilton, The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl
(18) Toni Morrison, Jazz
(19) Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry
(20) Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
(21) Toni Morrison, Paradise
(22) Mohandas K. Gandhi, Birth Control: The Right Way and the Wrong Way
(23) Toni Morrison, Sula
(24) Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
(25) Ella Cara Deloria, Speaking of Indians
(26) Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
(27) Assia Djebar, Children of the New World
(28) Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
(29) Laurence Yep, Dragon's Gate
(30) Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class
(31) Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman
(32) Assia Djebar, So Vast the Prison
(33) Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
(34) Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt
(35) Mariano Azuela, Los de Abajo
(36) Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized
(37) Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
(38) Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great
(39) Malcolm X and Alex Haley: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Admission: I didn't know anything about Malcolm X before I started reading this book, except that he was "militant," had something to do with something called the Nation of Islam, and got shot in the 1960s like basically everybody else. I got curious about him when I read a chapter in Kelley's Race Rebels about Harlem resistance during WWII that used this period of Malcolm X's life, with quotes from the autobiography, to talk about conks, zoot suits, and draft evasion.
Given this, when I sorted out who actually wrote the book (Alex Haley, of Roots, wrote it, but in really really really close collaboration with Malcolm X, who looked over the drafts and everything), I decided to save the introduction for later and just listen to Malcolm's voice (or as close as I could get to it) telling his own story. I didn't want to spoil anything of how it unfolded by reading anybody else saying to readers of the 1960s, "as you know very well, Malcolm X was famous for ___, ___, and ___ and you're just about to find out the secrets of ___, ___, and ___ about which we've heard so many rumors!"
This turned out to be a really good strategy, purely from a literary perspective, because a really important theme running through the autobiography is the changes Malcolm underwent throughout his life, and the writing style really supports this, taking you with him instead of looking back on his life from the distant perspective of his last-attained point of wisdom.
The epilogue, by Alex Haley (which is super interesting), explains much of this effect: it turns out that they started collaborating well before Malcolm X split with the Nation of Islam, and thought they'd finished the book before he made his pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course, that turned out to be an important point of transformation for him (it was when he discovered people with white skin who didn't have the same white privilege he associated with the "white devil" in America; it was when he came to believe in the importance of making the African American struggle an international one; it was when he first really encountered orthodox Islam and stepped up his own spiritual journey) and they had to write several more chapters. Malcolm X (or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as he called himself then) wanted to go back and change a bunch of what he'd said previously in the book, but Alex Haley convinced him to let it stand as representative of the earlier part of his life.
I dog-eared quite a few pages as I was reading; below the cut is a longish quote that I really like, from after his pilgrimage:The first thing I tell [white people now when they present themselves as being sincere, and ask me, one way or another, "What can I do?"] is that at least where my own particular Black Nationalist organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is concerned, they can't join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are "proving" that they are "with us." But the hard truth is this isn't helping to solve America's racist problem. The Negroes aren't the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their "proving" of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is--and that's in their own home communities; America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
There's so much material for really great discussion in this book, from literacy (I can think of some kids who might really be inspired by hearing Malcolm X's words about educating himself from the prison library) to the idea of "reverse racism" to the importance of action vs. speech in social movements ... and this book is perfect for real discussion in another way, because you can't straightforwardly criticize one of his views and be done with it; something he says early on that seems naive and simplistic, he'll acknowledge as such later on and reveal that he does analyze situations in complex ways--but he also doesn't want to erase the way he saw things earlier, regarding that basic anger as a wholly legitimate response to the racism in the U.S.
Since you are never going to get a post from me about a book by a male political or social figure without some attempt to answer the question "What's yr take on _____? Genius? Misogynist?" ... it's probably not news that Malcolm X has already been marked as a misogynist, and I'm sure not going to argue--in the autobiography he acknowledges that people have taken him to task for preaching the inferiority of women, and he responds by saying something like, "Well, you see, I have lots of experience with women and so I understand them very well!" (I would give you a quotation, but this is not one of the pages I dog-eared.)
The funny thing, though, is that there are quite a lot of women in the autobiography--his mother, his sister Ella, black women and a white woman he was involved with in his youth, prostitutes and lesbians he shared a boarding house with and was friends with, his wife Betty (with whom he had four daughters), the wives of African leaders, the female secretaries Elijah Muhammad took advantage of and whom Malcolm X later attempted to help legally. And almost every time he describes these individual women, they're complicated and strong and human, and they fit really badly into the demeaning stereotypes he comes up with every time he generalizes about gender differences. I've heard that one of his daughters has written a book...it might be interesting to see what she has to say about her father's relationship to women (although I think they were all very young when he died).
(1-15) Assorted
(16) Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
(17) Virginia Hamilton, The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl
(18) Toni Morrison, Jazz
(19) Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry
(20) Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
(21) Toni Morrison, Paradise
(22) Mohandas K. Gandhi, Birth Control: The Right Way and the Wrong Way
(23) Toni Morrison, Sula
(24) Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
(25) Ella Cara Deloria, Speaking of Indians
(26) Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
(27) Assia Djebar, Children of the New World
(28) Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
(29) Laurence Yep, Dragon's Gate
(30) Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class
(31) Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman
(32) Assia Djebar, So Vast the Prison
(33) Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
(34) Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt
(35) Mariano Azuela, Los de Abajo
(36) Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized
(37) Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
(38) Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great
(39) Malcolm X and Alex Haley: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Admission: I didn't know anything about Malcolm X before I started reading this book, except that he was "militant," had something to do with something called the Nation of Islam, and got shot in the 1960s like basically everybody else. I got curious about him when I read a chapter in Kelley's Race Rebels about Harlem resistance during WWII that used this period of Malcolm X's life, with quotes from the autobiography, to talk about conks, zoot suits, and draft evasion.
Given this, when I sorted out who actually wrote the book (Alex Haley, of Roots, wrote it, but in really really really close collaboration with Malcolm X, who looked over the drafts and everything), I decided to save the introduction for later and just listen to Malcolm's voice (or as close as I could get to it) telling his own story. I didn't want to spoil anything of how it unfolded by reading anybody else saying to readers of the 1960s, "as you know very well, Malcolm X was famous for ___, ___, and ___ and you're just about to find out the secrets of ___, ___, and ___ about which we've heard so many rumors!"
This turned out to be a really good strategy, purely from a literary perspective, because a really important theme running through the autobiography is the changes Malcolm underwent throughout his life, and the writing style really supports this, taking you with him instead of looking back on his life from the distant perspective of his last-attained point of wisdom.
The epilogue, by Alex Haley (which is super interesting), explains much of this effect: it turns out that they started collaborating well before Malcolm X split with the Nation of Islam, and thought they'd finished the book before he made his pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course, that turned out to be an important point of transformation for him (it was when he discovered people with white skin who didn't have the same white privilege he associated with the "white devil" in America; it was when he came to believe in the importance of making the African American struggle an international one; it was when he first really encountered orthodox Islam and stepped up his own spiritual journey) and they had to write several more chapters. Malcolm X (or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as he called himself then) wanted to go back and change a bunch of what he'd said previously in the book, but Alex Haley convinced him to let it stand as representative of the earlier part of his life.
I dog-eared quite a few pages as I was reading; below the cut is a longish quote that I really like, from after his pilgrimage:The first thing I tell [white people now when they present themselves as being sincere, and ask me, one way or another, "What can I do?"] is that at least where my own particular Black Nationalist organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is concerned, they can't join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are "proving" that they are "with us." But the hard truth is this isn't helping to solve America's racist problem. The Negroes aren't the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their "proving" of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America's racism really is--and that's in their own home communities; America's racism is among their own fellow whites. That's where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
There's so much material for really great discussion in this book, from literacy (I can think of some kids who might really be inspired by hearing Malcolm X's words about educating himself from the prison library) to the idea of "reverse racism" to the importance of action vs. speech in social movements ... and this book is perfect for real discussion in another way, because you can't straightforwardly criticize one of his views and be done with it; something he says early on that seems naive and simplistic, he'll acknowledge as such later on and reveal that he does analyze situations in complex ways--but he also doesn't want to erase the way he saw things earlier, regarding that basic anger as a wholly legitimate response to the racism in the U.S.
Since you are never going to get a post from me about a book by a male political or social figure without some attempt to answer the question "What's yr take on _____? Genius? Misogynist?" ... it's probably not news that Malcolm X has already been marked as a misogynist, and I'm sure not going to argue--in the autobiography he acknowledges that people have taken him to task for preaching the inferiority of women, and he responds by saying something like, "Well, you see, I have lots of experience with women and so I understand them very well!" (I would give you a quotation, but this is not one of the pages I dog-eared.)
The funny thing, though, is that there are quite a lot of women in the autobiography--his mother, his sister Ella, black women and a white woman he was involved with in his youth, prostitutes and lesbians he shared a boarding house with and was friends with, his wife Betty (with whom he had four daughters), the wives of African leaders, the female secretaries Elijah Muhammad took advantage of and whom Malcolm X later attempted to help legally. And almost every time he describes these individual women, they're complicated and strong and human, and they fit really badly into the demeaning stereotypes he comes up with every time he generalizes about gender differences. I've heard that one of his daughters has written a book...it might be interesting to see what she has to say about her father's relationship to women (although I think they were all very young when he died).