Brother Malcolm

so lately on this blog i've been going on and on about the autobiography of malcolm x .. well guess what .. i'm not done yet :p

i just finished the book yesterday .. the story is just amazing.

the story starts out by talking about malcolm's rough childhood .. malcolm's family never had any money but after his father is killed by whites they become very very poor .. his mother is eventually driven insane by the social service agencies who never cease to annoy her with their constant visits and questions .. literally insane .. she is sent to an asylum .. the children are split up and malcolm ends up in a foster home where white people take care of him .. he is brilliant in school but soon he begins to realize that because he is black no real future lies ahead for him despite his intelligence .. malcolm decides to quit school and moves to new york to live with his half-sister .. immediately he is enchanted by the sights and sounds of the city .. keep in mind that he is coming from a rural environment .. in the beginning he works various odd jobs but ultimately he becomes a hustler .. and not just any hustler .. a harlem hustler .. malcolm is doing drugs, hanging out with pimps and prostitutes, selling drugs, gambling, having sex with white girls, robbing houses, you name it he is doing it .. he is not necessarily a degenerate for living such a lifestyle .. he is merely trying to survive in the jungle that is the ghetto .. this part of the book i found to be the most interesting .. his description of the harlem underworld fascinated me.

but malcolm ends up being caught and he goes to prison .. initially he rebels .. so much so that he earns the nickname "satan" .. but a fellow inmate starts to tell malcolm about the nation of islam .. as do his brothers and sisters who have also embraced the ideology .. malcolm begins to change .. he realizes how ignorant he is in reality and that all he knows is street life .. he begins to educate himself while in prison .. so what did he do .. he copied the entire dictionary word-for-word .. in the book he mentions that he remembers how the first word was aardvark and how he had never known such a thing existed .. and so malcolm spent his entire time in prison reading book after book .. he read books about history, philosophy, psychology, etc .. he wrote letters to elijah muhammad every day .. and finally after seven years he was released from prison.

once he is out of prison malcolm becomes a member of the nation of islam .. he changes his name from malcolm little to malcolm x .. a firebrand minister preaching the "white devil" philosophy of the nation .. for twelve long years he happily dedicated his life to elijah muhammad .. raising membership numbers to the thousands, building temples in various cities across america, and making the "black muslims" a well-known name to everyone .. he even gets married to one of the sisters from the nation .. but then a fallout occured between malcolm and the nation .. a divorce if you will .. the stated reason that was given was that the nation was unhappy with malcom's comments about the JFK assassination .. but a closer look reveals that the real reason was that some of the nation officials were becoming jealous of malcom's fame and success .. malcolm decides to go to hajj and there he realizes that all men are his brothers .. that the white man is not literally a devil as he had been advocating .. he starts to embrace what he refers to as "orthodox" islam .. he changes his name yet again to al hajj malik el shabbaz .. he goes on trips and speaks at universities and meets heads of nations and and and .. he even decides to set up his own organization for african unity .. but there is still the lingering problem of the nation of islam which has basically issued a hit on his life .. one sad day when malcolm was just starting to give a speech in new york .. he was assassinated .. in the book malcolm says that he always knew he would die early and that it would be violent .. this was before the feud with elijah muhammad .. and after things went sour he knew that the nation was after him and sooner or later they would get him .. he knew this because he was once one of them .. may he rest in peace.

of course the above is just a short summary of a 500+ page book .. and of course the actual text is much more riveting and thoughtful .. so i say this for the last time .. i highly recommend this book to everyone .. if you want to read a book this summer let this be the one .. or if you are too lazy at least watch the movie .. it is based on the book .. moreover it was the book that inspired spike lee to make the movie in the first place :)