Now that you've seen the movie, read the book

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Spike Lee's new movie is based on the book, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." The following review of the book is reprinted from Socialist Outlook, a biweekly newspaper published by Fourth Internationalists in Britain.

The best reason for reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" is offered in its pages by the author himself:

"Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life from birth must be reviewed. All our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient."

With frankness and flashes of gentle, self-deprecating humor, Malcolm X tells his story to Alex Haley as a series of recollections and anecdotes intercut with his beliefs and political thought at different stages of his life.

He takes the reader through his "nightmare" childhood—the racist murder of his father, his mother's mental collapse, the breakup of the family, and on to his days as a Harlem hustler that ended in a prison cell.

Behind bars, he tells us: "I had never, up to then, been so truly free." With time on his hands and frustrated by his semiliteracy, he set about painstakingly copying out each page of the dictionary by hand.

He devoured books from the prison library, discovering the worlds of philosophy and literature. Above all he discovered history—in particular, the horrors of the slave trade and the early struggles against colonialism.

"Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world's black, brown, red, and yellow peoples ... Malcolm X every variety of the sufferings exploitation."

He tells of his conversion in prison to the Nation of Islam and, on his release, of his ardent ministry in the service of its leader, Elijah Muhammad. "I was a zombie then," he was to say to a journalist just before his death. "It cost me 12 years."

Even before his transition from separatism to nationalism and his final break with the Black Muslims, his emergence as a national figure championing the poorest Black people was already making Elijah Muhammad nervous.

Malcolm would publicly pour scorn not only on the racist white society but on what he termed the "fancy bourgeois Negroes" who wanted to be part of it at any price. In the last year of his lifeafter the formation of his own group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and his visits to Africa he was rapidly moving in a socialist direction.

His shadow writer, Alex Haley, who did not publish the book until after Malcolm X's assassination and who added his own lengthy epilogue, has been rightly criticized for skating over this evolution.

Even so, the accounts of some of Malcolm X's last mass meetings, his speeches, and his public statements on a whole range of issues show something of the changes and intense questioning he was going through right up to the time of his death. was assassinated Most harrowing to read is Haley's description, in the epilogue, of the weeks leading up to Malcolm's brutal assassination in 1965. Malcolm X had made clear to the press and to friends that he believed his life was in danger. In fact, he expected to be killed at any time and was desperately trying to make financial provision for his wife and four daughters.

Harassment and death threats had become a daily occurrence. He was followed everywhere. His family narrowly escaped a firebomb attack on their home.

His ideas and his stature had made him too dangerous, not only to the Black Muslims, but to the state. Haley describes how Malcolm X, just before his death, told him he no longer believed it was the Black Muslims who were out to murder him. Certainly, when he was gunned down that February aftemoon in Harlem, the 20 police who had been supposedly assigned to his meeting to protect him were nowhere to be seen.

The "Autobiography" may be inadequate on its own as a tool for understanding the immense contribution of Malcolm X to the cause of Black liberation and socialism. It does, however, provide an indispensable insight into his life and into the deeply rooted racism of American society.

Malcolm's impact

in other countries Malcolm X and his message are becoming known around the world.

"X" caps and tee-shirts are popular with young people from Japan to the countries of Africa. Many wear the clothing as a mark of identification with American Black culture and politics.

In Europe, Black immigrant youth have shown a special interest in Malcolm X's ideas. They look to Malcolm X as a symbol and a guide for their own resistance to the wave of racist attacks on the Black community.

An opinion poll taken several months ago in a surburb of Paris showed that Malcolm X is the most popular foreign leader among Black youths there. He is even more popular than Nelson Mandela. Malcolm X's influence is sure to increase when Spike Lee's new movie is released in Europe in March 1993.

impact he had in life?" Ross then goes on to cite facts from a book by Bruce Perry,