School Library Lady

We often hear of Malcolm X and his militancy, but The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley helps the reader understand where Malcolm X came from, why he believed as he did, and how he came to change his views shortly before his death.

Malcolm (Little) grew up in Lansing, MI. His father was apparently killed by members of a racist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. His insurance company called it suicide and refused to pay out. His family—this was during the Great Depression—descended into utter poverty. His mother became mentally unstable, and her children were removed from the home, split up among other family members.

Malcolm (with justification) blames his mother’s illness and the family break-up on whites. He comes, in fact, to blame whites for everything bad that ever happens to him. Any positive thing—such as being elected class president in an otherwise all-white school—is lightly passed over. However, Malcolm does show he has good reason for what he feels. Although he is bright, even teachers and counselors that he thought were his mentors insist that a black man can never attain a professional job.

In his teen years, Malcolm becomes a dope peddler and later a drug addict. When he goes to prison, he finds that he has the opportunity to educate himself and becomes well read. It is while in prison that Malcolm learns from his brother of Black Muslims. Reginald teaches him that God has revealed himself to a black man., Elijah Muhammad, and that the white man is the devil. Malcolm thinks through all his interaction with whites and finds this to be true. His sister Hilda gives him a lesson on how the white man came to earth—though black men were the original race, an ancient scientist, “embittered toward Allah now, decided, as revenge, to create upon the earth a devil race—a bleached-out, white race of people.” (Later, Malcolm, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, learns that this story infuriates the Muslims in the east.)

When Malcolm is released from prison, he meets Elijah Muhammad and becomes one of his most devoted followers. He later marries and has children, but continues to open temples and speak in public. It is only when he senses that Elijah Muhammad mistrusts him, and that he is being ostracized by the Black Muslims, that he takes his pilgrimage to Mecca. There he learns that there are Muslims of all races who get along with love and respect. His views on the white man begin to change, and he sees the structure of American society as the culprit. He also continues to see Christianity as a religion of double standards, as evidenced in the segregated churches of the South.

Always Running is recommended reading for the college-bound student, but every student I know who has read it liked it. Its author, Luis J. Rodriguez, was born in Mexico, but grew up in Los Angeles, in many impoverished neighborhoods. He recounts his early life in Watts when his brother, who had “a hunger for cruelty,” regularly beat him up. He also spent time with friends recounting local urban legends and Mexican myths.

 His parents had a hard time keeping jobs although his father had been a teacher and high school principal in Mexico. Stories of the prejudice against his mother are many. She was helpless without knowledge of the English language.

Rodriguez began running from the police early in life as he pilfered from local markets and broke rules such as entering school grounds after 4:40 P.M. On one such trip, his friend, running from the sheriff, fell through the roof of a building and died.

The first time Rodriguez saw gang shootings was on school grounds. Seeing the fear they put in everyone including the teachers, the “broken boy, shy and fearful . . . wanted what Thee Mystics had; . . . the power to hurt somebody.” Conditions in his life helped him move in the direction he wanted to go—Garvey High School is so bad that Luis had three teachers and five substitutes in his homeroom the first year. When a shop teacher accidentally cut off his own finger, Rodriguez found it and saved it in his locker, showing it around until it decays. When cliques are forced to join gangs, Rodriguez joins. Eventually, most of the gang’s members are dead or on drugs, so Luis was initiated into Las Lomas, enemy to Sangra. On this night, he was beaten and later told to plunge a screwdriver into an innocent man—which he did.

There are many stories of Rodriguez being set up by the police, of heavy drinking, burglary, being shot at, and eventually sniffing “anything”—paint, gasoline, clear plastic, etc. Later Luis will use PCP and heroin. He thinks of killing himself.

Rodriguez entered Mark Keppel High School where there is a yearly ‘tradition’ of violent fighting between the Chicanos and the whites. As gang activity heated up, several youth centers open up in the area. The gangs took them over, but Rodriguez met Chente, who helped form MEChA and other Chicano groups—someone who “could get the best from the system . . . without being a snitch or giving in.”

Rodriguez discusses hits on rival gangs, a rival gang’s decision to kill his sister for his deeds, the raping of many girls by local gangs, and his own early sexual relationships. Though all this would offend a sensitive reader, that same reader would have already been made sick or given up reading over the incessant violence.

Miraculously, although Luis is kicked out of school after school, he began to frequent the junior college library. Book displays on Puerto Ricans, Chicanos and African Americans were an opening to a better world for him, one that made him feel connected to the best in people. He finally went back to high school and made connections, becoming a leader. After more trials as an adult in the old neighborhood, he realized that there is no more life for him there.

Though Rodriguez states that he wrote this book to help his own son stay away from gangs, I’m afraid that what will draw some of teens to the book is the graphic violence and sexual encounters. For my own part, I had a rough time with Rodriguez because he didn’t seem particularly contrite about anything he had done. My sense was that he found his own actions beyond his control because of his environment.

The Color of Water is a dual biography of a man and his mother. By telling his mother’s story, says author James McBride, he is learning about his own. The narration alternates between McBride telling of his life growing up as one of twelve children and the life of his mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska (Ruth McBride Jordan). His own father died when his mother was pregnant with him—the eighth child. She later married Jordan and had four more children. McBride’s step-father is painted as a loving man who made no distinction between his step-children and his own. He was supportive to all, and his death is a blow to McBride. For McBride’s mother, it is an event that sends her into a tailspin.

McBride’s family is always poor, but his mother manages, in her own wild and sometimes neurotic manner, to raise a dozen smart, creative professionals. When McBride wavers between professional careers (he’s a man of many talents), he is compelled to ask his mother about her own life. This is terribly difficult for her as she has spent years forgetting her roots. It takes McBride nearly a decade to squeeze the story out of her.

Rachel (Ruth) was born Jewish in Poland to a mother crippled from polio and to a small, vicious, and mean-spirited father. Her childhood and youth are unhappy. She is an outcast in Suffolk, VA because she is Jewish. Her father buys a store in the Black section of (the segregated) town and becomes wealthy overcharging his customers. He hates Blacks and berates them in Yiddish. He molests Ruth, and she is afraid of him.

Ruth has a natural affinity for her Black neighbors and customers. Eventually, she has a Black boyfriend and becomes pregnant by him. Since this is the late 1930s, if people found out, the boy would be lynched. Ruth ends up in New York with relatives who will barely abide her but offer knowledge of a doctor who performs abortions. Ruth decides to stay in New York and avoid her father as well as the suffocating South. Here she meets her first husband, McBride.

Ruth’s family disowns her for marrying a Black man. Feeling a deep need for forgiveness—and for forgiving—Ruth becomes a Christian. Her family then considers her dead and will not speak to her, even when she is a pregnant widow with seven children.

This is a bittersweet story. McBride is right to be amazed by his mother, who is often the only white woman in the neighborhood. She refuses to see color lines and doesn’t acknowledge the stares and taunts of those around her. Her belief in the value of an education, tempered by her religious zeal, help to mold the author into the creative and successful man he becomes.