Malcolm X
3 Points Learned After Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I bought The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 2016 at The Last Bookstore in LA.
I moved to DC in 2021.
I love it, and I have been trying to get to know this city. One of DC’s unofficial names is Chocolate City; there is a park here unofficially named Malcolm X Park. Wanting to know my new home, it was clear this was the time to at last read The Autobiography.
I am glad I waited to read it until now, but I do think it is essential reading for everyone and will be for at least the next 100 years.
Here are three important impressions I had reading it:
- People hold onto his image of anger as much as they are unable to accommodate complex emotions from others — was it difficult to read it? Yes. Was it necessary? Yes. In life, his and ours, there is peace after the rage, and that is the point.
- His Hajj to Mecca was the pivotal moment that changed him, but the force that changed him, the thing that stopped the lion in its tracks, was gratitude — this is the essential piece of his life that is too often left out of the discussion
- He did not learn to read in prison. He was not illiterate until adulthood, and this myth needs to be examined because after a closer look it is clear that education, not prison, was the real catalyst
More soon,
Trevor