The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 6

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 165

June 14, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 6 - 271-331
Reading Time - 1 hour

One thing I learned... the "X" represents the lost African name of the believers of the Nation of Islam. But eventually it gets a little silly... like "James 67X" (the 67th James in the organization).

Malcolm did a lot of recruiting for the Nation of Islam and eventually got on the radar of the media. He engaged in debates with other mainstream Negro leaders (Malcolm himself uses the word Negro). "The white man is the enemy". The black man's original language was Arabic (that's a bit of a surprise - I would have thought they would have had Indigenous African languages - clearly historical accuracy is not big for them). Malcolm argues that the black people need self-respect - they need to lift up their own sense of values. Which makes sense... they need to be responsible for themselves and not wait for someone else to save them. Much of the section deals with the speeches of Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed - which... after a while, become a little tedious.

Given, however, that these events took place 60 years ago... and America is still dealing with blatant racism against African Americans... one wonders if anything has really altered?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 5

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 164

June 13, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 5 - 220-270
Reading Time - 1 hour

Malcolm gets out of prison and quickly becomes more heavily involved with the Nation of Islam. He is a convert and he buys everything that the group says, particularly its leader - Elijah Muhammed. A lot of the stuff that he says is pretty provocative. Black man is the Original Man. White man raping black ancestors. Black people remind white people of their guilt. Malcolm is such a fervent believer that he quickly becomes an assistant minister and eventually goes out and helps establish temples in other cities. He speaks quite harshly about women - "True nature of man is to be strong, true nature of woman is to be weak". His views of women are very misogynistic.

It's hard to take a lot of what he says seriously. A lot of this section is adulation of the leader, Elijah Muhammed who, apparently, can do no wrong in Malcolm's eyes.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 4

The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 163

June 12, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 4 - 155-219
Reading Time - 1 hour

We knew this was coming... Malcolm X ends up in prison for robbery. He is sentenced to 10 years. While there, his family gets involved with the Nation of Islam - a splinter group of Islam run by Elijah Muhammed. Malcolm X acknowledges that when he went to Mecca, the elders there were spitting mad at the Nation of Islam for twisting the teachings of Islam. Sooo... anyhow... Malcolm X gets converted and his life turns around. He starts reading as much as he possibly can about history and religion. He discovers the history of slavery in the United States and is appalled. Everything he reads about the world convinces him that the white man is the devil and has oppressed black, brown, red and yellow people throughout history. He joins the debating club in prison and tries to convert other black prisoners to Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X had an epiphany in prison and it turned his life around. One can't really argue with the success of that... he turned from "the personification of evil". What he turned into has yet to be revealed in the book... we shall see!

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 3

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 162

June 11, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 3 - 98-154
Reading Time - 1 hour

Well... I've learned a lot about the seedier side of Harlem life in the 1940s. Malcolm X was quite a character who, by his own admission, lived by his wits. He tried everything - armed robbery, drug dealing, etc. He also seems to have been a bit of a misogynist - "all women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength" (p. 108). Can't say as I really agree with him. On the other hand, he's being real... expressing how he sees the world. Throughout the course of this section, Malcolm gets deeper and deeper into trouble... he is on the run from all sorts of people, including the police and the chapter ends with him returning to Boston. I think, though, it's going to be a short-lived reprieve.

I really get a sense of the desperation in which people lived... particularly the African Americans. They really have been taken advantage of... as we have taken advantage of the Indigenous people in Canada. It's kind of sad... but what is the solution? I read a BBC Magazine article online that said, essentially, we are all inherently racist. We all look at the "Other" as different from ourselves, or our tribe, and shun them. If only we could see that we all belong to the Tribe called Humanity... things might be different.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 2

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 161

June 10, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 2 - 47-97
Reading Time - 1 hour

We learn quite a bit about Malcolm's time in Boston. He was only 15-16 years old but looked much older. He managed to get a variety of jobs, made some older friends and very quickly started associating with some of the big music names from the 1940s (Duke Ellington, etc). All because he was the shoe-shine boy at one of the big dance halls in Boston! I gather that Malcolm was quite driven... he wasn't going to just take whatever life threw at him, he was going to go out and seize it and make the most of it.

The book reads a bit like a Who's Who of that time - he drops a lot of names which are mostly meaningless to me. Musicians, hustlers, etc. So it's a bit hard to really get into the story sometimes. At one point, he was working as a sandwich boy on the Boston-New York railway run and discovered Harlem in New York. He was entranced and resolved to move there. One does get a very strong sense that Malcolm really has no time for white people... and that he regrets the many ways in which he, and other African Americans, tried to integrate into white society.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X - Part 1

Autobiography of Malcolm X -
Malcolm X

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 160

  June 9, 2017 

Book 48 - The Autobiography of Malcolm X -
as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X (1965)
 Part 1 - ix-xv, 1-46
Reading Time - 1 hour

This book is on my 2017 reading list! Hooray! I'm sort of reading whatever books I can easily get my hands on at the local library. I have some requests in with them but it can take weeks for some of the books to come in.

I really know nothing about Malcolm X. I know that he was a black rights activist and imagined he was something like Martin Luther King Jr. Turns out... he's nothing like MLK!!

Malcolm grew up pretty much dirt poor. His father died when he was 6 and by the time he was 13, his mother had been committed to a mental institution and he and his 7 siblings were split up between various foster homes. He blames the welfare system (run by whites) for destroying the family. Early on, one realizes that Malcolm has some pretty negative views of white people and white culture. He also admits that many blacks try to fit into the white system, try to integrate. It reminds me quite a bit of our relationship with Indigenous people up here in Canada. Us white people really have no clue of the Indigenous experience... none whatsoever... no matter how many First Nations friends we have. We don't have a clue. And it is the height of hubris to think that we somehow understand their situation.

Malcolm's options were fairly limited growing up in small-town Michigan. He once told his Grade 8 teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer (he was one of the smartest kids in the class). His teacher told him that it was "not possible as a Nigger". Malcolm then moved to Boston to live with his older half sister.

Malcolm sounds like a really "with-it" kid. He was very independent and a mover and a shaker. He wasn't going to take anything lying down and he learned a lot from his experiences. Reading about the situation of African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s... I wonder how much the situation has really changed in America?

Brave New World - Aldoux Huxley - Part 5

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 159

  June 8, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 5 - 189-231
Reading Time - 1 hour

This book was actually a really easy read and I whipped through it. The end of it was a bit of a surprise. The Savage watches his mother die in a hospital and then loses it while watching some Deltas receive their daily dose of soma (happy pills). Bernard and a friend of his appear and all three are detained. Bernard and his friend are sent to an island somewhere in the world (basically jail)... while the Savage retires to some deserted part of Surrey, England. His solitude doesn't last long though and hordes of people descend upon him. The book ends with him hanging himself. Kind of depressing... I hope Bernard and his friend made out better on the island. While the three were detained, the Controller has a discussion with the Savage... and therein we learn that science and art, along with Truth and Beauty, were sacrificed for happiness... It makes me wonder at the US motto... Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Is happiness the be-all and end-all? Is pleasure all that it's cracked up to be? If we're always told that we should "be happy", but we aren't, it's not wonder that there are so many depressed people out there.

The second part of the book has a follow-up - Brave New World Revisited, where Huxley looks back on the book from a vantage point of 20 years in the future. I'll read that later... For now, it's on to the next book.