The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Book Review

A friend of mine recommended The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley to me a couple of weeks back. Being an avid reader, I’m a little embarrassed to say that I had come across the book many times, but I had not dared to read it. Although reluctant to read yet another autobiography of some renowned person, I decided to give it a try. I’m glad that I did!

The book grips you right from the very first chapter that describes Malcolm Little’s life as a child. You can’t help but get pulled into the story of the black American child, his poverty stricken life and the appalling ways in which he has to succumb to doing some degrading things in order to survive. The account is gripping and the details vivid. Thought provoking though the book is, it starts losing its charm halfway through when young Malcolm is transferred here and there, bumped around, pushed and pulled in various directions till he starts life in the city. It isn’t until he starts trying to become one with the ‘in crowd’, trying to ‘move up’ and achieve status that the book starts to grip the reader again. From then on we learn of his life as a criminal, a pimp, an addict, a hustler and then later on as a prisoner, a racist and somewhat of an extremist. We see him as a Muslim, who has found his identity (or what he then believed it to be his true calling) ready to put down his life for the cause he believes in.

His life takes the turn for the best, and in some ways for the worst, after his visit to Mecca. He comes back as a changed man, a man the world comes to know as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. After that there is a powerful psychological drama that even makes the reader question himself and his true beliefs. We find a lost man - shaken by a shattered trust, a new man having found his true calling, a changed man daring enough to speak the truth when death deviously plays games all around him. We find, by the end of the book, a man who is dead, but alive in ways beyond common beliefs. Malcolm X changes much when he is alive, but the dead Malcolm X brings even more changes. He changes the way many of us think today; he changes the thought process of a whole race.

There are times when you have to put the book down and reflect upon not just your own life but on our life, collaboratively as a nation and then as a whole Muslim Nation.

I will not say that Malcolm X was the best leader ever, or the greatest person ever to live. Of course he had his flaws. What shocked me to some extent was his extreme hatred for the white people; he refers to them as ‘the white devils’. But given his background and the unjust system he was raised in, it is not too hard to understand his feelings or to sympathize with him.

The book made me understand the fanatics’ point of view to a greater extent. I can understand how people in Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and in other occupied areas feel.

Also, what I loved about Malcolm X was his realization that the black Americans had a separate identity and cultural background, something that they could look up to. It makes one wonder that how far down have we demeaned ourselves into believing that only by ‘becoming’ like the whites will we become something. Our psychological situation is nothing less than the situation of the black Americans back in the 20th century.

Nevertheless, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is truly an eye-opener. It is a revolutionary book about a human being who changed for the better when alive and has the capacity to change people after his death.

Published Link: US Magazine (The NEWS)/Feb 09