The Dead are Arising by Les Payne

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I'll admit, I never had a strong opinion on Malcolm X. I only thought of him what I was taught: violent and the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr. I'd never seen the Spike Lee biopic on him. I knew not a thing. But somehow, I came across this book. I thought it'd be good to add to my library because I'm at a point in my life where I really want to KNOW my Black American history as an Black woman. 

I've known the sanitized version of Black American history (i.e. what you're taught in school), but nothing in depth. This book was on my TBR list and I picked it at random from my vase of books. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY

Author and journalist Les Payne spent nearly 30 years interviewing anyone who Malcolm  X including his siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles, political figures and more.

Payne corrects the historical record of Malcolm X and unveils extraordinary revelations like the secret 1961 meeting between Malcolm X and the Ku Klux Klan.

The result of his research is this biography that gives a never-before-seen view of Malcolm from his  1925 birth in Nebraska to his 1965 assassination in Harlem. 

MY THOUGHTS

This was a stunning biography. Les Payne spent 30 years researching it and it definitely shows (he's also the founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, which I'm a member of, so he got extra points from me for that!)

Payne went in depth on so many bits of history to provide context for what was happening around Malcolm, that at times, it felt like I was reading a completely different book.

Malcolm was all over the place when he was younger, but he was able to transform himself into an important activist. I don't think society would be so forgiving of him today! Regarding the NOI, I feel like he was lost and then found himself in this sector of religion and became obsessed with it...but then when his eyes were open, he rejected it and that's what ultimately got him killed, unfortunately.

It's a shame what happened to his wife and grandson after his death. I also would've liked to know more about Malcolm and his wife's marriage and children in this biography, but I ended up buying Betty's biography anyway.

It's interesting that another biography on Malcolm X came out in 2011 and was also a Pulitzer Prize winner. I've read reviews from people who've read both and they say the tone of each biography is different as Payne is coming from a journalistic standpoint and Manning Marable's biography comes from a historian's standpoint. It's also interesting that both biographies also won the Pulitzer Prize in different decades. I'm wondering if it's worth it to pick it up....