The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcom X by Les Payne & Tamara Payne
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
While I read PLENTY of “just for fun” books, I try really hard to also read an equal amount of books for growth as well. (I gotta keep this middle aged brain CHALLENGED, yall…not just ENTERTAINED!)
I always want to be learning….I never want to close my ears or mind or heart to “new to me” ideas, history, theories and perspectives.
I always want to listen to voices that are not the same as mine so I can hear about a broad range of lived experiences and cultures.
I always want to be challenging my biases and stereotypes and also raise my awareness on issues or perspectives in which I possess high levels of ignorance. (which I realize more and more is quite an extensive list!)
I lived for a LOOONNNGGG period of time in my 40 years on this planet only listening to and learning about things from a VERY narrow white centered lens….and I NEVER EVER want to go back to having such a limited and biased world view.
So I am constantly looking for resources to inform me and open my eyes even further.
And of course, books are my primary go to for that since yall know I am a big ol’ bookworm.
My favorite thing when reading nonfiction for growth is to read autobiographies and biographies.
What I am going to push myself to do more is to read more of these about people who not only do I not know much about, but also people who I have negative thoughts on due to huge amounts of misinformation and untruths that I have absorbed from white culture and society as a whole.
This is why I decided the first person I need to begin to learn about extensively is Malcom X.
I admit that the media reinforced lie that I carried around as a truth about him was that while he did do tremendous things while fighting for civil rights, what he was most was a violent extremist who hated all white people.
Yeah…I know…that is hella cringeworthy and all kinds of racist.
I HATE that those were my views….but they were.
And now I realize what a ridiculously inaccurate, incomplete, white washed picture that paints of Malcom X.
The author of this book (who died before it published) was a renown journalist who did extensive research for YEARSSSSSSS to gather as much information as possible to be able to display an intricate, detailed and accurate record of the entire life of Malcom X.
To write this book he conducted personal interviews with close friends and family, examined court documents and police reports, read numerous newspaper articles and academic research texts, plus he also referenced other biographies that were previously written along with Malcom’s own words in his autobiography.
Les Payne’s daughter, Tamara, worked alongside him on this book and served as his principal researcher for many years and she also writes the introduction where she tells a bit of their writing experience together.
Here is the official summary of the book:
“An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author’s interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X―all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction.
The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm’s life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century’s most politically relevant figures “from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary.”
In tracing Malcolm X’s life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm’s Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl’s death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm’s exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary.
With a biographer’s unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations―from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder “Fard Muhammad,” who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz’s 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X’s murder at the Audubon Ballroom.
Introduced by Payne’s daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father’s death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.”
This book was fascinating and so informative.
Not only did I learn about Malcom’s life, I also learned so much about U.S. history surrounding racial and systemic injustice.
The atrocities and inequities that Malcom experienced himself and witnessed in his family and community due to racism and dehumanization against Black bodies were numerous. One of his childhood homes being burned to the ground, the “accidental” death of his father, and his experience in the foster care system to name just a few.
These things eventually pushed him towards finding and using his voice and pushed him to radical activism that would be world changing.
The author includes an extensive history of how the Nation of Islam (also known as Black Muslim) faith movement started in the United States, which I admittedly knew next to nothing about.
Once the author tells the stories of Malcom’s life as a child, as a teen, as a prisoner and as a young adult, you can see how and why he was drawn to this faith movement….and eventually left it and embraced Sunni Islam.
Malcom’s personal faith journey was a powerful one. But like it is for so many, his faith journey was a complicated one as well.
He had many convictions from his faith that led him to important actions that had lasting impacts…but he also had some jarring hurts and betrayals from fellow leaders he viewed as guides and mentors along the way….and created some himself.
The author did an excellent job of writing a comprehensive, thorough and unbiased biography that encompassed all the complexities and intricacies of Malcom’s personhood.
What I found intriguing in his writing was when he compared some of Malcom’s own stories in his own words from his autobiography with personal accounts from others.
Sometimes the stories lined up for the most part but there were some that were extremely embellished or exaggerated in Malcom’s telling and conflicted with multiple other people’s eyewitness accounts of the same events or experiences.
Sometimes Malcom even eliminated certain details vital to a story completely.
While some may see this as narcissistic or indulgent, I just see it as the way all of our memories work. Don’t we all remember details a little differently as years go by? Even if we are at the same event as another person, won’t our memories of the event be recollected quite differently due to having different lived moments? (I think of the 4 Gospels in the New Testament…same story for the most part but some details are pretty dang different due to 4 different authors having written them)
Comparing two people’s version of the same story, the full on truth usually lies somewhere in between the two distinct memories.
I think this book is a fantastic historical reference to educate others on the real, complex, complicated, powerful and impactful leader that was Malcom X.
It blew up and shattered my shallow biased perspective I had of him…and I am grateful for that.
I was reminded that people’s stories are never quite what we think they are….there is always SO MUCH MORE behind the surface than we could ever know.
None of us can be described in simple terms or categories.
We all live in a tension of being BOTH wonderful and terrible, helpful and damaging, powerful and weak.
And when we try to simplify other human being’s personhood into just one thing, it is not only inaccurate but dishonoring and disrespectful.
This book does an amazing job of holding those tensions and presenting as much factual truth as possible to represent a holistic picture of the human being of Malcom X.