The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
By Les Payne and Tamara Payne
Read by Dion Graham
Unabridged
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2 Formats: Library CD
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2 Formats: MP3 CD
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ISBN: 9781705008126
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ISBN: 9781705012727
Runtime: | 18.11 Hours |
Category: | Nonfiction/Biography |
Audience: | Adult |
Language: | English |
Summary
Summary
Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
Time Magazine Top 10 Books of the Year
New York Times Notable Book of 2020
Washington Post Best Book of the Year
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best
NPR Best Book of 2020
BookPage Best Book of the Year
A Library Journal Best Books of the Year pick
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
An Oprah Magazine Pick of Best Books of Fall
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch Pick
An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author’s interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X―all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction.
The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm’s life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century’s most politically relevant figures “from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary.”
In tracing Malcolm X’s life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm’s Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl’s death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm’s exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary.
With a biographer’s unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations―from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder “Fard Muhammad,” who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz’s 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X’s murder at the Audubon Ballroom.
Introduced by Payne’s daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father’s death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
Details
Details
Available Formats : | Library CD, MP3 CD |
Category: | Nonfiction/Biography |
Runtime: | 18.11 |
Audience: | Adult |
Language: | English |
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