Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America - Hardcover

Perry, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0882681036 ISBN 13: 9780882681030

Publisher: Station Hill Pr, 1991

Synopsis

The first biography of the late black nationalist leader, based on interviews with his friends and associates, government files, and his own letters, offers a contrasting portrait to the one presented in his famous autobiography. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

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Reviews

YA-- After 18 years of meticulous research and gathering oral and written observations of over 400 people who knew Malcolm X, Perry has produced a sensitive biography that chronicles the entire life of this heroic figure from his birth in Nebraska, his adolescent troubles with deprivation and drug addiction, his terror-filled prison ordeal, his conversion to Islam, through his rise as a Muslim leader, and, finally, his assassination. This compelling biography corrects and fills in the details of Malcom's autobiography (American Reprints) as told to Alex Haley. This book will change how readers see Malcolm and, because of that, it will be controversial. --Mike Printz, Topeka West High School, KS
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Malcolm X's father, self-ordained minister Earl Little, was a wife-abuser; his mother, Louise, tyrannized the family and often beat Malcolm before she was committed to a mental asylum. This loveless home, contends Perry, molded Malcolm (1925-1965) into a street criminal and prostitute. Exhaustively researched, this compelling biography corrects Malcolm's Autobiography at innumerable points as it peels away the black revolutionary's tough-as-steel persona to reveal the hurt, vulnerable man underneath. Perry, who compiled The Last Speeches of Malcolm X , depicts a self-hating, conflicted man who hungered for the approval of the very authority figures he defied. He also maintains that after Malcolm X broke from the Nation of Islam movement, he became a political chameleon, tailoring his rhetoric in order to tell moderates, black revolutionaries and socialists what they wanted to hear. The author rejects the popular theory that either the FBI or New York City police participated in Malcolm's assassination in Harlem by a trio of Black Muslims. This portrait of Malcolm X is the most intimate to date. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In a psychohistorical analysis resembing William McFeely's recent rendition of Frederick Douglass ( LJ 2/1/91), Perry traces Malcolm X's footsteps from birth in 1925 to death in 1965, using several hundred interviews to fill in detail and correct the autobiography Alex Haley edited ( LJ 1/1/66). Probing what he labels as the deep-seated and hidden causes that made Malcolm who and what he was, Perry produces a portrait of an emotionally abused and abandoned boy who grew to manipulate his fearful helplessness into emotional and political power that mobilized black America's rage at a historical moment when, Perry says, "white America needed someone to scare it to death before it became too late." Scholars, at whom the book seems aimed, may find some of the information useful, though they will have to skirt the occasionally simplistic interpretation. An optional purchase for academic collections.
- Thomas J. Davis, Univ. at Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Station Hill Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0882681036
• ISBN 13: 9780882681030
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560