Malcolm X, by Walter Dean Myers » (Reviewed by Wil C. Fry)

Photo by Wil C. Fry

★★ (2.2 of 5)

Full Title: Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary
Author: Walter Dean Myers
Year: 1993 (mine was 2020 trade paperback)
Pages: 188*
Genre: biography
Publisher: Scholastic Focus (Scholastic Inc.)
ISBN 978-1-338-30985-0 (trade paperback)
Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not including chronology, bibliography, photo credits, acknowledgements, index, or preface)

Summary

This is a biography of Malcolm Little, most well known as Malcolm X (though in his later years he went by El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz).

The Good

The best I can say for this book is: (1) it was short and easy to read, (2) it contained factual information about Malcolm X’s life and causes, and (3) the opening was a good hook, catching the attention.

The Disappointing

I did not know before buying this book, nor is it indicated anywhere on the cover or introduction, that Myers is known for writing children’s books. There is a “Coretta Scott King Award” logo on the front cover, but I further did not know that that particular award recognizes “outstanding books for young adults and children”. I figured it out quickly upon beginning to read. This book is not deep; the sentences are constructed simply and plainly so that young school children can easily absorb it. For example:

“His family name was Little, but Malcolm’s father, Earl, was a big man. Tall, heavyset, and dark, he was a man capable of working with his hands and with his mind.”
—page 7

It was also clearly for children in the simplistic ways that racism was explained (page 8-9), the topics it avoided, and the way it referred to controversy around the Nation of Islam:

“There were constant rumors about and around the Nation of Islam. Some of the sources of the rumors were clear, others were not. But one of the rumors that had been circulating in the early summer of 1963 was that Elijah Muhammad was the father of several children by women to whom he was not married. This was a violation of the principles of the Muslims.”
—page 133

The organization of several chapters was confusing, with certain topics (like the FBI’s surveillance of Malcolm X) mentioned several times in passing but without much explanation or relevance to surrounding paragraphs. Certain paragraphs were this way too, with sentences just wedged in there to make the entire structure uncomfortable.

Conclusion

I bought the book because I knew next to nothing about Malcolm X, having been taught nothing about him in school. In that sense, it was a success: I did learn quite about about the powerful figure of the early 1960s, almost none of which I knew before, and that’s where my two stars come from. But, having perused the Wikipedia article on Malcom X (here), I probably could have learned all this and more from simply reading that one web page.

I do plan to look for a more comprehensive work on Malcom X at some point.