The Autobiography of Malcolm X

A well-known author said that above a certain age, men's hearts harden and they

lose the ability to cry. As I was finishing reading Malcolm X's autobiography, a

molar was acting up, which must explain the few tears I couldn't hold back at

this passage in the epilogue:

 

    Here--at this final hour, in this quiet place, Harlem has come to bid

    farewell to one of its brightest hopes--extinguished now, and gone from us

    forever...

 

I rented the 1992 movie in VHS 20 years ago, when I was a graduate student in a

Canadian university, and have since watched it many times and am familiar with

its scripts. But I couldn't absorb the details and contexts until the book. For

example, Black youth took to the conk because the lye straightened their kinky

hair. They were ashamed of being Black and wanted to look more like whites.

 

Malcolm's dictionary-reading while in prison was, again, most inspiring.

 

    I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted

    to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad.

    In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there--I had

    commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple

    English, I not only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional. How would I

    sound writing in slang, the way I would SAY it, something such as "Look,

    daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad--"

 

    It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me

    feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any

    conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I

    picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly

    all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just

    skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what

    the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going

    through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these

    motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.

 

    I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary--to study,

    to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to

    improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn't even write in a straight line.

    It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with

    some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.

 

    I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary's pages.

    I'd never realized so many words existed! I didn't know WHICH words I needed

    to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.

 

    I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the

    first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book

    was saying. ... You couldn't have gotten me out of books with a wedge.

    Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors--usually

    Ella and Reginald--and my reading of books, months passed without my even

    thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so

    truly free in my life.

 

Brother Malcolm reminded me of Bruce Lee, each enlightening his people to be

proud of who they are and that life is what one makes it.