Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning MarableOverview
Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year
Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History
2012 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Finalist
Finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Nonfiction
One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2011
Synopsis
Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
In hardcover, this revelatory biography of human rights activist Malcolm X (1925-1965) was hailed as "magisterial...an exceeding brave as well as a major intellectual accomplishment," named as a finalist for the National Book Award and honored as one of the New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year. Now in trade paperback and NOOK Book, this bestseller promises to attract even more readers.
— Edward Ash-Milby
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.It is truly a shame that Marable passed away just days before this epic masterwork reached stores. This is a book whose reputation preceded itself and would have required little promotion; allegations by Marable that Malcolm both participated in a homosexual encounter with an early patron and was unfaithful to his wife Betty had already raised the ire of two of Malcolm's daughters, as well as others in the black community for whom Malcolm X has been raised to near-sainthood over the 40-odd years since his assassination. But neither claim is based on much evidence, and neither takes away from the overall impact of the work. Indeed the towering achievement of this book, which took Marable almost two decades to complete, is his ability to present Malcolm X as a flawed, struggling human being, as much at odds with his government as with himself. Marable deftly follows the same narrative path as did Haley's autobiography, but filling in the gaps and fine-tuning the exaggerations of that best-selling volume. Combing through FBI and NYPD files, gathering Nation of Islam interviews, and fleshing out Malcolm's post-NOI activities abroad, Marable succeeds spectacularly in painting a broader and more complex portrait of a man constantly in search of himself and his place in America.
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Kirkus Reviews
A candid, corrective look at the Nation of Islam leader and renegade—and a deeply informed investigation of the evolution of his thinking on race and revolution.
For decades, distinguished scholar Marable (African-American Affairs/Columbia Univ.;Living Black History: How Re-Imagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future, 2006, etc.) studied the life and work of Malcolm X (1925–1965), and this meticulous sifting of the fact from the fictionexpertly places him within the civil-rights movement of the time and as catalyst for the emerging Black Power struggle. The author looks beyond the myth that "Malcolmites" have woven around their leader and returns to original sources, such as NOI members and former members; Malcolm's widow and their children; African and Islamist chiefs Malcolm met on his extensive travels abroad; civil-rights activists, who were wary of his views on racial separatism; and files by the FBI and New York Police Department, who may have been complicit in his assassination by NOI operatives on Feb. 21, 1965. First and foremost, Marable deconstructs Alex Haley's masterlyAutobiography of Malcolm X (1965), which he and Malcolm collaborated on for years before Malcolm's death, but which exaggerates the exploits of Malcolm's earlier manifestation as "Detroit Red," probably in order to render more powerful the conversion to Islam of this hustler, pimp and thief incarcerated at the Norfolk Prison Colony. For years, Malcolm was NOI's exalted evangelical front man and first minister, broadcasting the organization's anti-white, anti-political doctrine before Malcolm's recognition of the crucial work of the civil-rights activists and the need for global black political engagement prompted his break with the NOIto embrace what Marable terms Pan-Africanism. Moreover, Malcolm could not sanction Elijah Muhammad's extramarital affairs and out-of-wedlock children, setting in motion a perilous countdown to NOI retribution. The Malcolm X revealed here was troublingly misogynist and occasionally precipitous in action and speech, but possessed a dauntless sincerity and intelligence that was only beginning to shape and clarify his message for humanity.
A bold, sure-footed, significant biography of enormous depth and feeling.
Michiko Kakutani
In his revealing and prodigiously researched new biography…Manning Marable…vividly chronicles [the] many incarnations of [Malcolm X], describing the "multiple masks" he donned over the years, while charting the complex and contradiction-filled evolution of his political and religious beliefs…Marable artfully strips away the layers and layers of myth that have been lacquered onto his subject's life…[and] manages to situate Malcolm X within the context of 20th-century racial politics in America without losing focus on his central character…—The New York Times