X

Teaming with veteran Magoon, the third daughter of Malcolm X draws upon history and family stories to create a novel about her father’s life before the “X.”

Malcolm Little grew up in Lansing, Michigan, during the Great Depression. Though times were hard, Malcolm felt that “when Papa was alive, I believed that I was special.” But Papa was murdered, his mother entered a mental institution, and the broken family was scattered among foster homes. The unusual but effective chronology of this completely absorbing novel finds Malcolm frequently looking back from 1945 Harlem to specific years in Lansing, trying to make sense of the segregation he faced, a teacher’s dismissal of him as “just a nigger” and his father’s legacy. Boston was meant to be a fresh start, but Malcolm soon became “a creature of the street,” and the authors’ evocation of the street hustler’s life is richly gritty indeed. Of course the street catches up to him, and ironically, it’s in prison where he begins to remake himself. He becomes a reader, corresponds with Elijah Muhammad and, on the final page, signs a letter to Elijah Muhammad as Malcolm X. The author’s note carries Malcolm’s story further and discusses the significance of his voice in American history.

Readers for whom pre–civil rights America is ancient history will find this poetic interpretation eye-opening and riveting.