6/9
To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma by Molly Millwood
A recommendation from my friend, Gila.
I spent Sunday devouring this. So much of it felt utterly familiar, but a way to name emotions. Not for the fainthearted (parenthood or the book?) but an important read. I might have considered it a bit ridiculous before having kids, but I just didn’t anticipate the many changes. The author’s story about picking up her son’s highchair and putting him in the garage for a moment, only to open the door and cry on his cheek has stuck in my mind, along with Millwood’s patient’s words, “I thought I was a nice person until I had kids.”
The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth by Ken Krimstein
This is captivating and prompted a purchase for next week: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Also introduced me to St. Augustine of Hippo, which brings me to this magnificent quote —> “Dear God, make me chaste and pure, just not yet.”
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault (translated by Richard Howard) - first half only and I’m starting over next week.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
I came to this autobiography almost completely ignorant of the man who was Malcolm X. I have learned and read around him, but was never quite at the point where I felt ready to pick this up and learn of him directly. This felt a bit like going to the epicenter, the Holy Land of American race relations - who better to read than Malcolm X. I have never felt like I deserved to be inspired by him or to read him - that it’s just not for me because I am white and I am privileged. Those feelings have made me dive deeper into wanting to understand - to catch up, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has so perfectly put it. That’s why I read as much about race as I do, but Malcolm X felt untouchable.
And, he is. He’s Holy. He is, he tells, he writes the story of his own continuous transformation and evolution. His father was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey (who, though I live less than a mile from the park named for him, I knew absolutely nothing about. Fun side note: I’m trying and failing to find any books about him at any of the independent Upper West Side bookstores. Surprised?) and was brutally murdered by white men. That murder came after the family had been forced to relocate several times, once due to whites burning down their home. Once Malcolm X’s father was murdered, his mother had immense difficulty providing for her seven children, especially since the (white) government agencies in the area were working so diligently to write her incompetence for her. The children were eventually split up between foster families. His mother was quickly put into a mental institution, where she spent almost 30 years. Truly a blip in the long arc of history, which, some say, moves toward justice. Really?
Malcolm X was an incredible student who was told he shouldn’t dream too big, since he was black, and should think about trades (he wanted to go to law school). That dream of going to law school was never realized. At one point in the book, Malcolm writes about the talented criminals he hustled with in Boston and New York, and what success they could have achieved if it weren’t for the (white) system and the stifling impact of the color line.
A few things struck me throughout these pages -
Malcolm’s intense love of education and embrace of change - “I still marvel at how swiftly my previous life’s thinking pattern slid away from me, like snow off a roof.” “My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”
his views on women - Malcolm X seemed to have particular trust issues with women. He often cited a specific number of women (4) that he ever partially trusted in his life. He didn’t seem to meet with women in any kind of professional sense, and women seem only to have played a supporting role in his life - particularly the financial support of his Boston-based sister, Ella, who gave the money she’d personally saved for her own trip to Mecca to Malcolm so that he might go. He speaks of Sister Betty X, his wife, reverently, and consistently cites her obedience and unquestioning devotion as a sign of love for him. During his break with Elijah Muhammad, he says he knows he won’t have to explain or fear doubt from Betty - which is something incredible, considering he was completely bound to the word of Elijah Muhammad for more than 12 years before the break.
embrace of change - Malcolm’s trip to Mecca changed his worldview. Even though many of the changes were firmly opposite what he’d spent years speaking on publicly, he didn’t seem to hesitate to explain his new way of thinking. His courage in this way is incredible. Politicians today seem to be on the constant quest to reaffirm their views, forsaking evolution and growth. “In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again—as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.” And then toward the very end of his life, talking about how his views had changed: ”They won’t let me turn a corner! I’m caught in a trap!”
There’s a list of about 30 quotes that I just can’t set aside. Here are a few:
In that peace of the Holy World—in fact, the very night I have mentioned when I lay awake surrounded by snoring brother pilgrims—my mind took me back to personal memories I would have thought were gone forever…as far back, even, as when I was just a little boy, eight or nine years old. Out behind our house, out in the country from Lansing, Michigan, there was an old, grassy “Hector’s Hill,” we called it—which may still be there. I remembered there in the Holy World how I used to lie on the top of Hector’s Hill, and look up at the sky, at the clouds moving over me, and daydream, all kinds of things. And then, in a funny contrast of recollections, I remembered how years later, when I was in prison, I used to lie on my cell bunk—this would be especially when I was in solitary: what we convicts called “The Hole”—and I would picture myself talking to large crowds. I don’t have any idea why such previsions came to me. But they did. To tell that to anyone then would have sounded crazy. Even I didn’t have, myself, the slightest inkling…. In Mecca, too, I had played back for myself the twelve years I had spent with Elijah Muhammad as if it were a motion picture. I guess it would be impossible for anyone ever to realize fully how complete was my belief in Elijah Muhammad. I believed in him not only as a leader in the ordinary human sense, but also I believed in him as a divine leader, I believed he had no human weaknesses or faults, and that, therefore, he could make no mistakes and that he could do no wrong. There on a Holy World hilltop, I realized how very dangerous it is for people to hold any human being in such esteem, especially to consider anyone some sort of “divinely guided” and “protected” person.
I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
Well, I believe it’s a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. If that’s how “Christian” philosophy is interpreted, if that’s what Gandhian philosophy teaches, well, then, I will call them criminal philosophies.
This one reminds me particularly of Arendt and the banality of evil:
That discussion with the ambassador gave me a new insight—one which I like: that the white man is not inherently evil, but America’s racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.
Using this public persona (and changed mind) to help push people toward MLK -
Malcolm X was seated on the platform next to Mrs. Martin Luther King, to whom he leaned and whispered that he was “trying to help,” she told Jet. “He said he wanted to present an alternative; that it might be easier for whites to accept Martin’s proposals after hearing him (Malcolm X). I didn’t understand him at first,” said Mrs. King. “He seemed rather anxious to let Martin know he was not causing trouble or making it difficult, but that he was trying to make it easier….Later, in the hallway, he reiterated this.