The Malcolm X Story Retold: In Search of the Blessed Community

This small book is a poetic retelling of the Malcolm X story, in which his life is reframed as a spiritual quest. The book provides a contrast to almost fifty years of writings that focus primarily on unraveling the complexities of his political beliefs and sorting out the details of his intense life and his tragic death by assassination. While these are of obvious importance, Malcolm’s life is also a story of the universal human search for a place to call home. It is wrought, however, from the distinctive fabric of the African American experience and Malcolm’s unique and towering personality. Near the end of the book the narrator unreservedly declares, “Malcolm X lived a life of mythological proportions/That will always elude men’s intellectual notions.”
Malcolm’s life began in the embrace of a proud and closely knit Black family. He had older siblings to watch over him and younger ones to which he could return the favor. This was all torn away from him during his childhood by forces of racial hatred-----a racism that was stirred to ferocious levels by the Black Pride teachings of Malcolm’s father to his congregation and neighbors. The assaults included terrorizing threats from the Ku Klux Klan, the burning of the family’s home when Malcolm was four years old, the brutal death of his father under the wheels of a street car, his mother driven by the stress to a home for the insane, and eventually the children being separated by state agencies. From here our hero’s journey begins, leading through three successive communities with which he passionately identified. These included the underworld of hustlers and hipsters, the Black separatist Nation of Islam, and eventually a more inclusive and orthodox Islam. In each of these he rejoiced greatly at finding a community that felt like home. ..