With no hyperbole Marable's last book provides a transformative view of Malcolm X ranging from little details to large consequential facts and events previously unknown to even a close follower of Malcolm X. Marable's years of research and scholarship is on full display with this, at times challenging, biography. It provides a greater breadth and understanding of the man who has become an international symbol and multicultural hero. During that myth building process the flesh and blood man was obscured. This book will help to reverse this dynamic by presenting several different sides to his personality, character and actions; none of which I will spoil in this review. As equally important, the reader is also given an understanding of why the image we have of Malcolm was developed. Why for example the old line that towards the end Malcolm X's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s thinking were gravitating towards each other is not especially accurate.
Mr. Marable's reasonable conclusions, especially within the last chapters, are a welcome addition to this already groundbreaking work. There are however a few instances in which his opinion seem not only unsupported by the facts but come out of left field.
Malcolm's evolving views on race are well known but just as interesting were his changing views about women. By the time he returned to Harlem from the Hajj his political and social views were in a state of flux that would continue until his murder. At that point the people that followed him out of the Nation of Islam had more in common with the Nation than they had with him. One difference in particular was his belief for a more inclusive role for women. This was one of the first stumbling points he faced when trying to build a working relationship between the members of his MMI mosque and secular civil rights organizations. Marable mentions Malcolm's deep affinity for the philosophy of Georg W. F. Hegel. Understandably than he wanted to synthesize these cultural differences and devise a workable situation. His inability to do this set the stage that led to his murder.
I think it's fair to say whatever form of Islam Malcolm practiced throughout his life; it had the effect for him as a liberating consciousness. It was a medium he wanted to use to uplift people, work thorough their differences, soothe their anger and alienation with the aim of creating coherent moral and ethical societies. When traveling in the Middle East and Africa he met with groups that ran the religious and political spectrum within the Muslim community that often were openly hostile to each other. His attempt to meet with these various groups was not just for support of his goals of demanding human rights for African Americans but to replicate his American goals for synthesis but on an international scale.
The fact of the matter is though many of his positions, but in particular his views about the role of women, were far more progressive than many Sunni Islamic communities that exist today. Were he to live longer he might have come across analogous problems on the international stage as the ones he faced in Harlem.
He was very simply a man ahead of his time. This biography's disclosure of some pointed shortcomings makes his ability, as the title suggests, to continually reinvent himself all the more admirable.
While the New York City Police Department and the FBI do not come off very well despite Marable's even handed assessment, it is the the Nation of Islam that rightfully comes under the most scrutiny. If Marable's years of research and numerous interviews with formerly unwilling subjects about the Nation are true than he has brought forth a devastating indictment against the Nation. Not simply that it isn't a Islamic organization (at times the followers prayed towards Chicago instead of Mecca) and that its idiosyncratic tenants are ludicrous on its face and are tantamount to a cult. But far worse their institutionalized culture of physically, sexually and monetarily exploiting it's members while doling out severe violent penalties for even minor infractions.
It's undeniably true the Nation succeeded in instilling a sense of pride, purpose and responsibility within its members. It appears though the Nation exploited that sense of pride within its members for its own short sighted aims. Marable's research explains how the Nation's leadership is as responsible for the murder as the individual members that carried it out.
The Nation's positions have been shown repeatedly to be on the wrong side of history. What else needs to be said about an outfit that found common cause with neo-Nazi groups and the Klu Klux Klan?
Read the book. It will stay with you.
I was however disappointed with the Kindle edition. It's not just that there are no links to the footnotes/endnotes in the text, but no footnotes/endnotes at all.
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Reviews with images
A SERIOUS MUST READ IF YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT UNDERSTANDING WHO MALCOLM WAS.
The thorough research can definitely be seen in this MASTERPIECE. Many facts and details usually generalized about Malcolm's life are further explored in this volume.I rarely found anything other than an objective tone when reading this book. I've studied no public figure more, and am defensive when it comes to Malcolm. I found a satisfying neutrality. Pertinent to Malcolm's enemies and allies alike.I read this book slowly so that I could digest it better.For any with scholarly pursuits where anything Malcolm related is concerned, this book is NECESSARY!
Top reviews from other countries
Hollis Byfield
An absorbing and rewarding study of a remarkable life
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2011Ahmad al-Mardaawi
Such a trouble but powerful man in the end died in the only pair of clothes he owned and they had smelled like smoke from the house fire he dodged a week ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2018