The Dead Are Arising

Worldwide, Incl CN/Singapore/Malaysia but Excl British Comm

349105

49166

Les Payne

Tamara Payne

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize&#8211;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&#8212;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&#8217;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&#8217;s most politically relevant figures &#8220;from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary.&#8221; In tracing Malcolm X&#8217;s life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm&#8217;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&#8217;s death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm&#8217;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&#8217;s unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations&#8212;from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder &#8220;Fard Muhammad,&#8221; who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz&#8217;s 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X&#8217;s murder at the Audubon Ballroom. Introduced by Payne&#8217;s daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father&#8217;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.

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WINNER • 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY • WINNER &#8212; 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION • TIME Magazine &#8212; 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020 • A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and Editors' Choice Selection • Best Books of 2020: NPR, Washington Post, Library Journal, Chicago Public Library • Excerpted in The New Yorker • Longlisted &#8212; Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Best Books of Fall 2020 &#8212; O, the Oprah Magazine, The Week, St. Louis Post-Dispatch An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author&#8217;s interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.