MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention
Hosts Cecil Prescod and Celeste Carey speak with Kevin Doughten, an editor at Viking Penguin, about the new book MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable. MALCOLM X was ten years in the making and draws from multiple untapped sources. Reviewers say the text will stand as the definitive work on Malcolm X.
Unfortunately author Manning Marable died on April 1st just as this major work was being released. He was Professor of African American Studies and a professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. He was the founding director of African American Studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003, and also served as director of the university’s Center for Contemporary Black History. The author of fifteen books, Marable also edited of the quarterly journal Souls.
MALCOLM X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm’s troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents’ activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Marable has based his work on extensive interviews with Louis Farrakhan and other intimates, as well as previously unseen FBI files and archival information from the Nation of Islam’s own records.
In MALCOLM X, Marable draws on previously unavailable portions of Malcolm’s diaries from his travels in the Middle East and Africa, documenting a pivotal moment in his transformation from a staunch devotee of the Nation of Islam to the leader of a new movement. Through his tireless work and countless speeches, Malcolm X empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable’s MALCOLM X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most important figures in the history of civil rights, surpassing previous treatments in its depth and intensity and capturing with revelatory clarify a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
As an editor Kevin Doughten has worked with a range of authors, including Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, Pulitzer Prize–winner Jimmy Breslin, and bestselling authors Robert Lacey and Rafe Esquith.
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