The Penguin E6.99 Reviewed by Kathy Lowe The best reason for readine the Autobiography of Malcolm Yos offered in Its pages by the author himself.
Why am I as 1 am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth must be reviewed. All our experiences fuse into our personality.
Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
With trankness and flashes of gentle, selldeprecating humour, Malcolm X tells his story to Alex Haley as a series of recollections and anecdotes intercut with his behefs and political thought at different stages of his life.
He takes the reader through his nightmare childhood.., the racist murder of his lather.. his mothers mental collapse.. ler hustler which ended in a prison cell.
Behind bars, he tell us, 1 had never, up to then, been so tuly tree With time on his hands and frustrated by his semiliteracy, he set about painstakingly copying out each paze of the dictionary by nano He devoured books from the prison library, discover ing the worlds of philosochs and iterature Above all he discovered history, in particular the harrors of the slave trade and the carly struggles agRinst colanialism.
Book after book showed mehow the white man had broucht upon the world'e black, brown, red and vellow peoples every vunety of the sufferings of exploita ton!
He tells of his conversion in prison to the puntamical black separatist sect, The Nasam are on his release, of his ardent minic. try in the service of its leader shah Muhammad I was a zombie this ne was to say to a turnalist tast before na death. it cost me twelve years, Even before his transition from separatisin to mahonalism and tas amat break with the Black Muse ims, his emerzence as a ma tanal figure championing the poorest black people was already makine Eliah Mohammad nervous He would publicy pour scorn, not unly on the racist white society but on what he weed he begges negros who wanted to part of it at any price.
In the last your of his lite 12 Sept, 1992 after the formation of hla own group, the Organisa non of Afro-American Unity, and his visits to Africa, he was rapidly moving in a socialist direcbon.
His shadow writer, Alex Haley, who did not publish the book until after Malcolm X's assassination and who added his own lengthy foreword, has rightly been criticised for skating over this evolation.
Even so, the accounts of some of Malcolm X's last mass meetings, his speeches, *and his public statements on a whole range of issues show something of the changes and intense questioning he was going through right up to the time of his death.
Most harrowing to read is Haler's description, in the foreword, of the weeks leading up to his brutal assas smation in 1965.
Malcolm X had made clear to the press and to friends that he believed his life was in danger, In fact he expected to be killed at any time and was desperately trying to make financial provision for his wife and four daughters, Harassment and death threats had become a daily occurrence, He was followed everywhere His fami• Y arrowly escaped in a arebomb attack on then home.
His ideas and his stature as a black leader had made him too dangerous, not only to the Black Muslims, but to the state.
Haley describes how Malcolm X. just before his death, told him he no longer beheyed it was the Black Muslims who were out to murder hia. Certainly when he was gunned down that Fabruary afternoon la Harlem, the 20 pollce who had been supposedly assigned to his meeting to protect fum were nowher to be seen.
The Autobiography Day be inadequate on lis own as a tool for understanding the immense contribution Di Malcaim X to the cause of black liberation and sacahem It does, however, provide an indispensable aghtinta hile lite audis the deeply rooted racism on American maday The Е1 шак рері Lichester Socalist Outlook Dept 11 но 1 Newton Subst Manchester Make cheques to Sociahst Outloak No. 27 Evolving towards a revolutionary solution - Malcolm X Reformist wing of the Black L
the break up of the fainily, and on to his days as a Har-
quality of Malcolm X