A book that was given to me as
a Christmas gift by one of my closest friends and, despite my normal lack of
enthusiasm for (auto)biographies (or even cinematic bio-pics), was actually a
quality present.
Despite teaching 20th
century history, I didn’t know much about Malcolm X, so this book was quite
eye-opening – I’m not going to debate up to what extent it truly reflects the
man’s life (how could I?) but it surely does justice to his myth.
As I read it I kept thinking
how much he would have despised me as a rich, white European who teaches on the
history of Ghana or Pakistan by starting with the disclaimer “well, I’m a rich,
white European” – would have I been the worse of the liberals? And would he have
changed his mind after his Hajj
One thing that really struck
me was the faith Malcolm X seemed to have in non-white leaders: Elijah
Muhammad, Kwame Nkrumah, and even Mao are praised time and again, but, as far
as I know, were quite far from being saints themselves (despite the fact that
at the time of writing, in Nkrumah’s case, the temptation to identify him as
the prototype of the enlightened African leader was quite clearly extremely
tempting for everyone).
As I approached the
autobiography, I expected its latter parts to be the most exciting ones, but I
have to say the chapters I liked the most were probably the early ones, the
ones on Detroit Red, the hustler, with his passion for jazz (and his encounters
with all the big names of the time) and for swindling people.
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