from colorlines.com

Hey folks,

I’ve found some reviews (the first ones that came up in a search) of Marable’s biography of Malcolm X. Below I’m including both the links and some highlights (both interesting and gut-wrenching) from the articles, in case you don’t have time to sift through them.

See you in class!

Negative review of Malcolm X bio is rejected: “ ‘Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention’ is an abomination,” wrote reviewer Karl Evanzz. “It is a cavalcade of innuendo and logical fallacy, and is largely reinvented from previous works on the subject.”

Peeling Away Multiple Masks: Interesting phrasing here: because all biographies do, really, make an argument, even though we often claim they don’t… “Mr. Marable argues that Malcolm X was a gifted performer, adept at presenting himself to black audiences “as the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister.””

Malcolm X by Manning Marable – review: “One of the great shibboleths of American thought puts Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as reconciling opposites: Martin v Malcolm, the integrationist apostle of non-violence versus the separatist demagogue, coming to a dialectical synthesis near the end of their lives. Marable evokes this dualism while implicitly rejecting it.”

The Malcolm X you don’t know: Manning Marable’s new book is stirring up old controversies: “Any high-quality work that comes out of the world of ethnic studies, or is focused on ethnic concerns, is more often than not a condemnation of the entire field. The problem is not the interest itself, but the tendency to tilt more toward indoctrination than education, self-pitying myth rather than the facts and nuances of human life, which are never as simple as a placard.”

Manning Marable’s ‘Reinvention’ Of Malcolm X: “Marable also explores the question of Malcolm X’s homosexual relationship with a white businessman. “It can be read as salacious or titillating to make this claim,” Harris-Perry said. But Marable “doesn’t necessarily say that Malcolm is a gay man. He is suggesting that Malcolm at certain points in his life engages in sexual activity with men and particularly this man — but he frames it around economic need and social anxiety.””

And for more fun, a tribute to Manning Marable from one of my favorite websites, Colorlines.com.