Imani Perry Reviews 'Malcolm X: A Life of Re-Invention'

'Malcolm X,' by Manning Marable

Review by Imani Perry | Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, April 24, 2011

In the early 1990s, it was popular for African American teenagers and young adults to wear T-shirts with images of Malcolm X that read, "Our own black shining prince," a reference to Ossie Davis' poignant eulogy of the slain leader. At that time, the embrace of Malcolm X, particularly by young hip-hop fans, seemed a deliberate counterpoint to the sanitized, mainstream and universally celebrated image of Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm X was, in our iconic rendering, the unapologetic black radical voice for freedom and justice. He served an important symbolic role for a post-civil rights generation of African Americans who faced the devastating long-term effects of deindustrialization, poverty, educational inequality and mass incarceration.

Now, some 20 years later, with the publication of Manning Marable's "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," the public is being challenged to dismantle the iconography of the "black shining prince" and confront Malcolm X as an incredibly complex and at times deeply conflicted figure.

Impassioned conflicts have arisen over the content of the biography. Salacious interest in whether Malcolm had homosexual encounters; whether he and his wife, Betty, were unfaithful to each other; whether he and Alex Haley misrepresented his story in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"; and whether the convicted parties were actually the ones responsible for his murder have been matched with outrage at the manner in which Marable unflinchingly presents Malcolm X as a fallible human being.

Marable's death, just a few days before his book's release, feels like a last gasp of herculean effort, a final, noble offering from a path-breaking historian and political scientist. While the author's absence facilitates some of the melodramatic reaction to his magnum opus, we are forced to defend or decry without his input.

But in truth, although the conflict over the content has probably driven sales and attention to the book, the brilliance of this biography has little if anything to do with its apparently shocking revelations. Marable has crafted an extraordinary portrait of a man and his time. Malcolm moves through the social and intellectual history of mid-20th century black America, and his periods of growth and stagnation mirror the tides of black life.

Read the Full Review @ The San Francisco Chronicle

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Imani Perry is a professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.