Chapter Five

Through Authors and Works

A study of the Islam experience in black American literature will be

far from being complete or effective without an attempt to survey the

same phenomenon in the writer; and the writings of the concerned

period. However, a comprehensive and exhaustive survey of the

phenomenon is not within the scope of this thesis. Therefore, a cursory

glance at the black American writers and their works is being attempted

here.

As has already been noticed, the dominant cultural and socio-

religious phenomenon in the black society since the early 1960s has been

the Islam experience discussed in the previous chapters. Almost all

writers and artists of the black society have been influenced by this. Even

James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison who indulged a good deal of their

creative life in the literary ideol~g:~. and aesthetics of white America, were

found subscribing to the new trend in the later years of their career. The

new black aesthetic and the new ljlack cultural and litenuy outlook were

so dominant that it is hardly possible to identify a black writer of the time

who didn't subscribe to it. To make a list of authors and works with

noticeable effect of the new iiesthetic that emerged as a literary

manifestation of the Islam experimce in the socio-religious spheres will

be virtually a difficult task. However, a modest attempt to discuss the

most outstanding writers in terms of the "Islam experience" and a passing

mention of those whose manifest Islam experience makes it an offence to

overlook them, is being made here.

'The black American writers significant in this regard could be

found belonging to two broader categories. The lirst of these is those who

were attracted to the religicus and political ideology of the black

nationalist Islam movement and indulged in literary activities vehementlh

subscnb~ng to the new aesthet cs and the new outlook. The second is the

mconce~vably large number of writers of the older as well as the younger

generation who, although th:y didn't subscribe to the religious and

political ideology crf the movemenf were very deeply influenced by the

new aesthetic and literary outlmk and changed their literary and creative

allegiances accordingly.

Askia Muhammad Toure / Roland Snellings, Imamu Arniri

Baraka i Le Roi Jones, Harun Kofi Wangara 1 Harold G. Lawrence, Haki

K. Madhubuti / Don L. Lec:, Eldridge Cleaver, Jusaf Iman, Ahmed

Legraharn Alhamisi, Yusuf Rz~hman, Omar Lama, Elton Hill-Abu Ishak

DJangatolum J Lloyd M. Corbin, Jr. and the women writers Sonia

Sanchez, Aisha Hughes, Sistsr Barbara Ann Teer, Johari M. Amini ,'

Jewel Latimore (wife of Don L. Lee), Malaika Ayea Wangara, Fatimah

Afic Fayole Kamaria Ama, ~ h i n a Baraka, Safiya Henderson. Lateifa-

Ramona Lahleet Hyman, Rashidah Ismaili, Anasa Jordan, Arninata

Moseka i Abbey Lincoln, I~[alkia M'Buzi, Asha Rahman and Nzadi

Zimela-Keita / Mic,helle Mc Michael are some of the writers belonging to

the first category. Many of these writers. since their association with the

black Muslim movement, abandoned their old names that tied them to the

white Christian world and i~ccepted new names revealing their new

identie. Some of them. howzver, are even now known after their old

names along with aliases like Le Roi Jones 1 Amiri Baraka and Don L.

Lee / Haki R. Madhubuti.

Among the second categmy of black writers are Larry Neal,

Etheridge Knight, Ed Bullins, Ron Milner, Clara Charles Fuller, Jimmy

Gavett, Nil& Giovanni, S. E. Anderson, Lorenzo Thomas, Gwendolyn

Brooks, George Jackson, Benjamin Brawleys, Carol Freeman, Arnold

Perl, Robert Hayden, Owen Dodson, Dudley Randall, Margaret Walker,

Nanina Alba, Lance Jeffers, Mari Evans, Sarah Webster Fabio, Raymond

R. Patterson, Gerald W. Barrax, Bob Kauhan, Keorapetse Kgositsile,

Julius Lester, De Leon Harrison, IYilliam J. Hams, Alice Walker, Stanley

Crouch, Angelo Lewis and a host of others.

These poets and writers and a considerably large number of others

who are not mentioned here were dedicated to the new black aesthetic

and literary ideology in varying degrees. Writers like Arniri Baraka and

Askia Muhammad Toure were especially significant in this regard on two

grounds. Firstly, thev had sub:;cribed to the political and religious

ideology of Islam. Secondly, they were those who with their pioneering

efforts translated the "Islam experience" of the black people of their

period into literature and gave new moorings to the black literary

activities by formulating the neu black aesthetic. All these writers, as a

matter of fact, joined hands to disprove the general critical consensus of

the 1940s that the black writer co ~ l d and would be merged into American

literary life and would lose the distinctive black literary identity. On the

other hand they were unitedly realizing a literary dream of the time

beautifully expressed by Proftlssor Nick Aaron Ford, one of the

mainstream literary academiciara. In his Blue~rint for Nearo Authors

166

(1950), quoted in the anthology Black Writers of America, edited by

Richard Barksdale and Kenneth Kinnamon, he argues that the black

writer must continue a purposeful preoccupation with racial themes, for

only he could understand and corlmunicate "the tragedy, the pathos and

the humor of being a Negro in America" (657). But, he insisted, this must

be done with skill and expert crattsmanship, so that the result would be

more than social propaganda and protest. A glance at the works of these

black writers will reveal that they have gone a step or two hrther than

this dream. Not only that they didn't join the white mainstream literary

trend but also that they have delfeloped a whole world of their own in

literature with skill and expert c:raftsmanship, with an altogether new

aesthetic, ideals, values, myths, images, symbols, diction and semantics.

A dividing line between tr~e two categories of writers mentioned

above is almost impossible, for these writers vary from person to person

in the degree of Islam associ:xtion they had. Besides, there were

considerable ups and downs in :heir Islam association too. Some like

Askia Muhammad Toure were with a firm faith in the ideology of Islam

throughout their life and were conipletely transformed. Writers like Sonia

Sanchez, after a period of active i~ssociation with the Muslim movement,

went their own way in religious matters although they never abandoned

their faith in the new aesthetic. Poets like Amiri Baraka were, at a later

stage, found showing interest in other political ideologies like M d s m

and Leninism, still retaining the bIuslim identity, in an effort to define the

predicament of the black people in the global context of the suffering

humanity, and to bring about immediate solutions.

167

Fiction and Drama

The black literary renaissance of this period was exceedingly

manifest in poetic expression than in fiction or in drama, although there

were significant new directions in these genres also. In fiction, after

Ellison and Baldwin, new and significant directions became discernible.

Assimilation into the mainstream was no longer a need or demand. The

black man's dilemma in Americ:a had become a worldwide issue,

somehow identifiable with the world's post-war concern with problems of

personal identity and invisibility. Paul Marshall, Loyle Harrison, Martin

Hamer, Ernest Gaines, and William Melvin Kelley and many other short

story writers of the younger generation were very active in their efforts to

give a new orientation to the black fictional writings. The publication of

Baraka's only novel The System of Dante's Hell (1966) and (1967),

a collection of short stories, was e. significant event as it revolutionized

both the thematic and stylistic orielrtation of black fictional writings. The

new aesthetic outlook that dominated the poetic expressions of the time

thus began to significantly emerge In the fictional realm too.

Shakespeare's Hamlet says that in drama one finds "the abstract

and brief chronicles of the time," and this is abundantly true of the plays

written by the black playwrights in the 60s and 70s. Lonne Elder, Ed

Bullins, Douglas Ward, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka and others

were the active figures in the new theatrical movements who thoroughly

transformed the character of black theatrical writings. As in the case of

the young revolutionary poets, thesa playwrights wrote their plays for

black audiences, and the social and political messages were always direct

and revolutionary. They didn't experience the dilemma James Weldon

Johnson earlier had of the black artist schizophrenically trying to please

both a black and a white audience. They wrote in open defiance and

callous disregard of the white aud ence and directed their words solely to

the black world. True to Hamlet's prescription about abstracting and

chronicling the time, they delved into the grimy depths of black life in all

its aspects.

With the formulation of the new aesthetic and theatrical outlook,

these playwrights, especially Baraka and Ed Bullins, went a step further

and used the theatre as a powerful means for educating and transforming

the black community. Richard Barksdale and Kenneth Kinnamon

observe:

The leading playwright in this group is the provocative and

dynamic Amiri Baraica, whose plays - The Toilet, m, Dutchman, Black Mass, Slave S h i ~ - reflect what he calls

the "iconology" of the revolutionary theatre movement. His

announced objective is to force change and, by working

"black nigger magic" cleanse the world of hate and ugliness

and restore virtue. (665)

Baraka's plays written durng the black nationalist period of his

career, like the poems of this period, were good examples of his

experiments in image reversal. With the new awareness of the black

man's history and his new associations Baraka realized that a deliberate

effort at a complete reversal of the western white images was required in

the context of the black cultural renaissance. This was, in Baraka's view,

because "a whiteman's heaven is a blackman's hell," and the black people

will never be able to command dignity and respect in the hostile white

169

chauvinistic society unless he b~lilds up his own myths, symbols, images

and standards. This, he believed, was to be done with reference to the

religious and cultural roots of' the black people. In dramatic works

Baraka's effort was not anything else. They were either translating the

new black Muslim ideology and myths into the theatrical language or

were dwelling at length on the black man's past to educate the black

audiences in their history. But in Baraka's case this was never done by

sacrificing its value as a work of' art. He did this with such immense skill

and craftsmanship that they successfully stood the test of time and are

read widely even today.

Although all his plays art: significant in the general context of the

black cultural renaissance, Black Mass. Slave Ship, Jello, and The Death

of Malcolm X deserve special .attention. Black Mass is a play with the

black Muslim theme of Yacub's creation of the white man whereas the

1967 play Slave Ship dramatizc:~ the history of black man's arrival in

America which the black audiences had to be made aware of at every

stage. The Death of Malcolm _X deals with the theme of Malcolm

assassination which taught the black people a good deal about their

shameful predicament. His 1970 play Jello was significantly noted for the

inversion of popular white images that it abounds in. All these plays give

us a good idea of the Islam experience phenomenon that pewaded the

black literature of the time. This phenomenon was discernible in the later

works of Lonne Elder, Ed Bullin:;, Douglas Ward, Adrienne Kennedy and

others of the generation also.

170

Poetry

The richest outpouring of the new literary consciousness was in

poetry. Although older poets - Sterling Brown, Melvin Tolson, Langston

Hughes, Owen Dodson, Arna Bcatemp, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret

Danner, Robert Hayden and others - continued to write and were

influenced by the aesthetics 2nd iconology of the new literary

renaissance, it is in the works of the younger poets like Amiri Baraka,

Askia Muhammad Toure, Gerald W. Barrax, Etheridge Knight, Sonia

Sanchez, Mari Evans, Calvin Hernton, Naomi Madgett, Lance Jeffers,

Nikki Giovanni, Don L,. Lee and others that we get the fullest expression

of the new consciousness and the diverse manifestation of the new Islam

experience. Going by the bitter experiences of the militant integrationists

of the "fallacy ridden forties," these new writers as a whole represent the

spirit of militant black separatism of the "searing sixties." A completely

new poetry was born -~ new in style, content and emphasis. The poets of

this period were, generally speaking, gifted, caustic, assertive, committed

revolutionaries. The aesthetic leacier of these writers was Amiri Baraka.

The hero in their political and rc:ligious life whom they all loved and

followed was Malcolm X who haC become a legend by the early sixties.

The aesthetic ideology of these poets makes them quite

distinguished from their predeces::ors. For them a black poem is not just

another aesthetic happening but a searing political statement designed to

further the cause of social and political revolution. For them poems are

weapons to maim and guns to kill - "Assassin poems:' Accordingly, only

rarely does their poetry bring tke reader into the realm of the poet's

emotional privacy. These poets speak not for themselves but for a

collectivity - a black collectivity. There is no time or need for personal

revelation and private reflection; there is time only for public declarations

and revolutionary assertions to d~scipline the black man. Talking about

the preoccupation of these p : t s , Richard Barksdale and Kenneth

Kinnamon observe:

Not only do these poc:ts avoid personal revelations, but many

of their poems exhor: the faithfbl to remain true to the cause

of revolution and maintain the discipline befitting a

committed revolutiotlary. Do not, says Don Lee, be a "part-

time revolutionist" who talks Black in the daytime and

sleeps white in the nighttime. Do not, he says, confuse a

"cool" outward pselldorevolutionary appearance with true

revolutiotlary commitment.. . Do not, says Sonia Sanchez,

use pseudorevolutionary ardour as an excuse for sexual

promiscuity; ... Do not, says Amiri Baraka, believe that drug

addiction can help the revolutionary cause; rather, he

demands that Black poets write "knock-off poems for dope-

peddling ... slick, half-white politicians." (662)

Apart Gom the thorough thematic reorientation, the black poetry

of the time evinces structural and stylistic innovations too. The black

revolutionary poets scorn form and rhyme and produce the kind of

breath-conditioned poetry that could be better declaimed than read.

Indeed, black revolutionary poetry almost demands a "preacher man"

delivery, with incantations, dramatic pauses, inflections, and some body

movements. Thus, the message of the poem becomes one with the

delivery of the poem. Or, to put it in another way, their poetry must be

I 72

"creatively" read or spoken.

Besides a studied d i sd~ in of the western European histon, white

man's culture and the institutionalized white Church. the black poetrv of

the period puts forward a nt:w outlook, a new set of values, and an

altogether new philosophy cf life that have obvious links with the

preacliings of Malcolm X and the emergent Islamic movements. A

cursory analysis of some specimen poems is attempted here and in the

nehT few sections with the idea of bringing this fact to light. The poems in

lit11 and the excerpts quoted here for this purpose are all from The Poetrv

of Black America: Anthology. of the 20th Century edited by Arnold

Adoff. Deviating a. bit from standard academic practice, three of Amiri

Baraka's short poems are quoted here in full before discussing them in the

light of what has been said abcmve.

1 . leroy

I wanted to know my mother when she sat

looking sad across tht: campus in the late 20's

into the future of the soul, there were black angels

straining above her hc:ad, carrying life from our ancestors,

and knowledge. and the strong nigger feeling. She sat

(in that photo in the y:arbook I showed Vashti) getting into

new blues. from the old ones, the trips and passions

showered on her by h:r own. Hypnotizing me, from so far

ago. tiom that vantage of knowledge passed on to her passed on

to nle and all other bli~ck people of our time.

When I die. the consciousness I carry I will to

black people. May they pick me apart and take the

173

useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave

the bitter bullshit roam white parts

alone. (255)

2. We Own the Nigl~t

We are unfair

And unfair

We are black magicians

Black arts we make

in black labs of the heart

The fair are fair

And deathly white

The day will not save them

And we own the night (257)

3. SOS

Calling black people

Calling all black people, man woman child

Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in

Black People, come in, wherever you are, urgent,

you, calling all black people

calling all black people, come in, black people, come

on in. (257)

These three short poems by Amiri Baraka, like his many other

poems, very clearly reveal the thnlst of the author's preoccupations in the

black nationalist revolutionary penod. "leroy," the first of these, might, in

appearance, be a personal and deeply subjective poem of

autobiographical significance. But the poem is, in fact, the externalization

of an inner experience that the black people commonly shared during the

time. It is their new awareness 3f the value of individual and racial

cultural legacy. The legacy of any people, cultural or otherwise, is of

crucial importance in the formation of their ethos. But this has been,

unfortunately, denied to the blask people in America for so many

centuries. Now in the attempt of reorienting himself to this legacy, a

photograph of his mother, for Baiakti, is powerful enough to work the

trick by hypnotizing him, "... cajrying life from our ancestors, 1 and

knowledge, and the strong nigger feeling ..." It reveals to him the whole

lot of his rich past which he hopes to pass on to his people when he dies.

The poem however ends with a s1:rious advice to his people that in the

process of drawing "the sweet meat" of his feelings, they shall not absorb

the elements of rotten white cultun: - "bitter bullshit rotten white parts" -

he has acquired during his life in America.

"We Own the Night" is a sl~ort and beautiful poem that highlights

the implications of being black tmd being proud of that. The poet is

proudly declaring that his people "are unfair," that they are not of fair

complexion, but that doesn't imply that they are less powerful or less

efficient in anything. On the other hand their blackness itself is the very

source of their strength. "We are black magicians / Black arts we make 1

in the black labs of the heart." The mystery surrounding the blackness ot

his people, like the night, is embedded with diverse hidden powers that

make them "black magicians." Now the white people who boast of their

being fair, the poet argues, do not have any reasonable claim for

superiority, for their "deathly white" only shows their shallowness and

vulnerability. They are particularly doomed because the daylight of their

cultural and civilizational values only exposes them and also does not

save them. The proud black consciousness of the period was built up

through such powerful poems thal evoked the ethos of the black race.

"SOS" is an effective a ld highly communicative short poem

expressive of the urgency, as the title implies, of the black people to

move on to their own. What Malcolm X exhorted to his people on the

public stages, Baraka is doing i r~ this poem. It is an urgent call to the

black people who. for long, were scattered in several parts and were

facing the grave threat of a total loss of identity, to get together urgently

and unite to save themselves. It is a call of great urgency as any SOS

could be, because their survival crs a community depends greatly on how

fast they unite. Though a very short poem, it clearly communicates all

that the new black nationalist movements ventured to do.

The Islam experience is, perhaps, the most explicit in the poems

of Askia Muhammad Toure. I-,is poems like "JUJU" and "Floodtide"

evince his preoccupation with t ~ e history and religious heritage of the

black community in America. "Tmhid is an excellent poem in which the

poet is at his best in relating the black American society with their

African and Islamic past. The title "Tauhid" is an Arabic word suggestive

of the oneness of God which is the central element of the Islamic

ideology. The message of the poem is that the black people of America

176

have only one solution to their prc~blems: going back to the Islamic hith

of Tauhid which had been their very identity in their African past. They

have to make deliberate efforts to achieve this. This is to be done

removing the cobwebs of the .white on their way. In the process

lhev will have to discard their 5 lace f' r~ieeer -- identity. And thus it is a holv

pilgrimage with spiritual hunger that takes them "toward that bright

Crescent Moon." This was once achieved by Malcolm X and it is the verv

basis of his itientity and remaining legacy.

Reach like you never reached before past Night's Somber robes

into the star-crossed plains of Destiny.

Keach with hungry 13lack minds towards that bright Crescent

Moon

glowing in the depth?. of Malcolm's eyes. (339)

This pilgrimage, for the black people, is inevitably through the

various stages of their past, "illto the throbbing heart of / Africa flowing

intu Mecca" catching on the way the "Cosmic Rhythms" of their life in

the past. Such a pilgrimage will cleanse them of the "rotting" influence of

"the mad house of the West' and let then1 "Reach into the Womb of

Time" and find their "Afro-SOII~." This great voyage, the poet says, has to

be made unitedly as a collectike venture.

Reach into the Worn:? of Time. past aeons of chains.

to find your Afro-sor~l. that holy part of you connecting Harlem

LO the roots oi"l'imb~ ktu.

In this last great Vo)age, walk togetha children. take my hand

Sister-Brother. take my heart my wisdom take, turn this

Wheel

to Cosmic Order: ... (340)

But there is nothing unnatural about this voyage into their genuine

identity. In the poet's view, it is an ict of turning the "Wheel / t o Cosmic

Order." If they do so, the "Sunrise" 3f Allah's love will come to their help

and the winds of freedom they blov~ in the ghettos will be turned into the

whirlwind and take them to the mountains of their rebirth.

... Allah's love vibrating in the Sunrise burning-

ghetto-winds-of-Freedom blowing, Angels calling

Stc?rrzse ! Lovers

Warriors Daybreak ! [)reamers, reach the mountain of

vour Rebirth

in the Whirlwind of oi r Rising in the West! (340)

'I'he poem, with its effective: use of the African and Islamic ethos.

is a powerful exhortation to the black people in America to return to their

1sla111ic identity.

In "JUJU," a lengthy poem in which Toure dwells at length on the

revival of the black people, he e:<plicitly refers to the reemergence of

Islam in the black society:

PRAISE BE TO:

ALLAI I

who brought us Malcolm and Elijah

and reopened Islam ii ;e a Flaming Torch

to elevate oul souls alld send us

soaring to the mountai!ls of the Black World

seeking Paradise. (342)

The poems of Etheridge Ihighf Gerald W. Barrax and Sonia

Sanchez generally highlight the impact of the new consciousness of race-

pride on the attitudes of the black people. The black people, especially the

poets, Etheridge Knight points out in his "For Black Poets Who Think of

Suicide," are not to be an irresponsible group of people living aimlesslv

without any awareness of their m~ssion in life. They shall not, further,

become victims of the decadent white American culture.

Black Poets should live - not leap

From steel bridges, like the white boys do.

Black Poets should live - not lay

Their necks on railroad tracks, like the white boys do.

Black poets should seck, but not search

'Too much in sweet dark caves

Or hunt for snipes down psychic trail;

Like the white boys do: ( 2 3 3 )

They are, on the other hanc, to function as the spokesn~en of their

community and to champion the cause of their cittnmunity's ~c>tnplele

liberation.

For Black Poets belong to Black People.

Are the flutes of Blacl: Lovers Arc

The organs of Black Sorrows Are

The trumpets of Hlack Warriors.

1,et all Black Poets dic: as tn~tnpets.

And be buried in the (lust of marchirtg feet. ( 2 3 3 )

Gerald W. Barrax's "Fourth Dance Poem" beautifully illustrates

that the black people are no longer the puppets of the white masters, to

dance to their tunes and to move according to their commands."The

White Lady has asked me to dance. / She had been lurking under the

bridges I had to cross 1 to go an.ywherel' (225).

The new consciousness has taught him that it will only lead to his

destruction. Now that he has been emboldened to disobey and to rebel, he

has enough strength to seek his own way. The race-proud black American

is not willing to obey. He kncbws about the consequences. Yet he gives

only excuses: "but I say to her ;myway / ah White Lady / but I don't know

this dance" (225). The white lady naturally doesn't believe him, and

further realizes that the black men aren't servile any longer:

She hasn't believed me.

"They flee from nle that sometime did me seek."

Oh White Lady

now you've said i : (225)

This boldness the youtig race-proud black men have developed is

a clear shift in their attitude: "for me it was a long walk from Alabama 1

and I was on my way anywhe1.e" (225).

Sonia Sanchez' poem "homecoming" is noted for its typological

innovativeness, like many other poems written in this period. It shows

how the black people of the period subjected their attitudes and notions to

a total re-evaluation in the co~~text of their new black consciousness. The

black men and women now realize that blackness is not a stigma and that

things black also are beautiful :

now woman

i have returned

leaving behind me

all those hide and

seek faces peeling

with Geudian dreams (286)

But this is not what the white machinery including the

newspapers had them believe.

this is for real.

black

niggers

my b,:auty.

baby.

i have learned it

ain't like they say

in the newspapers. (286)

It is this realization that p:rsuades the poet to return to the cultural

legacy of her race; and true to tlie title of the poem it is a homecoming

experience for her. Although the poem is in the first person, it is relevant

to the male as well as female sections of her race; and Sanchez is

speaking generally on their behalf.

Alex Haley's Roots Besides the poets, novelists and dramatists, there are writers like

Alex Haley who, strictly speaking, do not belong to the world of

literature, but have become imrrlensely popular because of some of their

very influential works which ha~le direct or indirect bearings on the Islam

experience phenomenon. The aulhors and works that come under this

category are so heterogeneous and diverse in nature that it will not be

within the scope of this thesis to analyse or to classify them. These

writers are mostly journalists with investigative enthusiasm and they have

produced a wide range of literature as diverse in nature as a piece of

interview with a luminary in the field to a research study of immense

authenticity. Of this body of works one singular work, by Alex

Haley, is of unique significance and value in terms of literature and in

terms of the black people's Islan~ experience. And therefore it will be

worthwhile to dwell a little on the author and the work.

Alex Haley was a black American journalist who shot to fame in

the mid 1960s and again in the late 1970s on account of his two classic

achievements The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1 965) and Roots (1 976)

respectively. Born in Ithaca, New York, and brought up in Henning,

Tennessee, Haley became a jourrialist only after a twenty-year career in

the US Coast Guard during which period he taught himself to write. His

first book The Autobiography of Malcolm X was the result of a series of

intimate sessions of interviews with Malcolm X. Since this book is being

taken up for discussion a little while after, let us focus on the second one

for now.

Roots, according to Alex Ilaley himself, is a book for the research

and writing of which he had to spend virtually twelve years since the

publication of the first book. Described variously as the saga of an

American family and the epic drilma of one man's search for his origins,

Roots is today one of the best-read and the best-sold American classics. A - search or a saga, the book is of immense value in the context of the

religious, political and cultural revival of the black people in America. It

is a book that promises a breath-held reading like any really popular

fictional work. The style of prcisentation, of course, is fictional. The

author would have been required i:o use his imagination a great deal to fill

the work with incidents, episodes and anecdotes. But at the basis, it is an

edifice made up of facts yielded from his research pertaining to nearly

two hundred years of his family's history.

Roots is the saga of Alex Haley's family starting with Kunta - Kinte, his sixth generation ancesior, who, in 1767, was kidnapped in his

sixteenth year from Gambia, in LLfrica, and was brought to America as a

slave. From Kunta Kinte in the 1767 Gambia, Haley traces the history

down to his own generation, passing through six generations of slaves

and freedmen, farmers and black:smiths, lawyers and architects. Passing

through the experiences of each 3f these generations; Haley gives us the

ear-prickingly heard account of the black man's experiences of anguish

and misery over the years in America in a much better way than any

narrative writer of the black American society. The book is certainly of

great value as a chronicle of the black people's tragic and miserable life in

America. But its significance for us in the present context is not on that

account, but in its unique suc.cess in historically relating the black

American family of Haley to the late eighteenth-century Gambian family

of Kunta Kinte which was one of the influential Muslim families with a

glorious Islamic tradition. Besides connecting Haley's family with the

Gambian family of Kunta Kinte, gives us a beautiful account of the

much-valued culture of the eighteenth century African Muslim society.

That all the significant factors pertaining to the book were based on the

183

authentic information yielded by Haley's research further increases its

credibility as a valid document .and chronicle for the black people in

America. The book had been of great excitement for them over the years

especially because they all had been trying to connect themselves to their

African and Islamic roots in the wake of the new Islam experience. No

wonder Haley's fame grew tremendously after an eight-part dramatization

of appeared on the televisicln in the United States in 1977 and later

elsewhere. The final episode rc:portedly attracted one of the largest

audiences in American television history. And that same year Haley

received the Spingarn Medal and a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize

board for his book.

The Malcolm X Phenomenon

A very important phenomenon of the literary revival of the 1960s

and 1970s that continues to persirit and is very overtly related to the Islam

experience of the time is the bu k of literary works with Malcolm X as

the focal point. Malcolm X is the kind of phenomenon that only very

rarely happens to a community. In the black society since the abolition of

slavery or before no single indi~idual could be seen with the magnitude

of influence on common man that Malcolm X had. His rise from the

Harlem ghettos, his years in the prison, the thorough transformation he

was subjected to, his emergence 3s a powerhl leader, as a demagogue, as

an organizer and his tragic and unfortunate death at the hands of assassins

were a unique experience for the black people of all sections. There is

virtually no way of assessing tht: magnitude and depth of inspiration that

he created in all sections of thc black society. But the bulk of literary

works produced in the years after his death, and continuing to be

produced now, will give one some idea.

The works produced with Malcolm X as the focal point are not

confined to the boundaries of any genre. 'They are as diverse as anything

could be - poems, plays, stories, 1)iographical writings, essays, memoirs,

treatises, screenplays and even films. These works are produced by a

wide range of writers including the leading celebrities of the black

community like Larry Neal, Rotert Hayden, Margaret Walker, Amiri

Baraka, Etheridge Knight etc. Thi:s is besides a whole lot of works on the

ideology of Malcolm X and edited collections of his speeches that have

ever since been appearing. A very important feature of the literary works

built around the Malcolm X phenomenon is that whether the authors

subscribed to his ideology or not, they all throw light on the liberating

ideology of Islam that produced Malcolm X. In fact this constitutes a

major portion of the literary work:; of the black people evincing the Islam

experience discussed in the previous chapters.

Quite characteristic of the period, the richest outpouring of the

Malcolm phenomenon in literature is found in poetry. An entire

anthology of poems For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and Death of

Malcolm X was published soon after his death with as eminent

contributors as Larry Neal, Keors.petse Kgositsile, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri

Baraka etc. Poems of rich literary value have ever since been coming out

from such authors like Quincy Troupe, Insan 1 Robert S. Preston,

Gwendolyn Brooks, Nanina Albii, Gerald W. Bamx, Julius Lester etc.

These poems in general highlighi. two things: one is the charismatic and

inspiring leadership of Malcolm X and the other is Islam, the ideology

183

that liberated him. For the Black people of America, looking for a means

of real emancipation, both are equally significant. In Malcolm's example

there is always a model for them and an immense source of energy and

power that keep them perpetuall> inspired. In the ideology of Islam they

see the road, the highway they are to take now which, as in the case of

Malcolm X breaking the shackles of the oppressive and rotten white

culture that keep them in bondage;, will lead them to Africa, to Mecca and

to their own ancestral home. Ths, for the black people, symbolizes the

real emancipation. A few of tht:se poems are briefly analysed here to

illustrate this fact.

Robert Hayden's "El-Hajj IMalik El-Shabazz" is virtually a brief

account of Malcolm X's eventful life. The poem begins with a description

of the atmosphere of violence and hatred in which the dead leader spent

his childhood.

The icy evil that struck his father down

and ravished his mother into madness

trapped him in violelice of a punished self

struggling to break free. (123)

Malcolm's adolescence - a period of delinquency and moral and

cultural deprivation - is described as follows:

As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red,

he fled his name, became the quarry of

his own obsessed pursuit.

He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped,

zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks

186

in the hot rose and reefer glow. (123)

The black nationalist period of Malcolm X, a time when as a

follower of Elijah Muhammad, he championed the black nationalist racist

ideology, is described as follows:

Then false dawn of \ision came;

he fell upon his face before

a racist Allah pledged to wrest him fiom

the hellward-thrusting hands of Calvin's Christ -

to free him and his kind

from Yakub's white-faced treachery.

He rose redeemed from all but prideful anger,

though adulterate attars could not cleanse

him of the odors of .:he pit. (124)

Malcolm's trip to Mecca for hajj, following which he changed his

name and became a true Muslim leaving aside Elijah Muhammad's racist

ideology, is beautifully describeti in the concluding lines of the poem:

But first, the ebb tirne pilgrimage

toward revelation, t~ejira to

his final metamorphosis;

Labbayk ! Labbuyk !

He fell upon his fac:e before

Allah the raceless in whose blazing Oneness all

were one. He rose renzwed renamed, became

much more than there was time for him to be (125)

Gwendolyn Brooks' "Malct~lm X" is a short poem illustrating how

Malcolm X IS held in high esteem by the people of his race. Brooks

describes him "Original. / Ragged-round. 1 Rich-robust." (1 58). Malcolm

X's intellectual sharpness and bc~ld and dynamic nature that won him

millions of admiring followers is described as follows:

He had the hawk-man's eyes.

We gasped. We saw he maleness.

The maleness raking out and making guttural the air

and pushing us to walls. (158)

Malcolm X was a leader of unusual charisma who could awaken

his people from their deep slumber and elevate them Gom their

downtrodden state. Brooks concll~des referring to this: "He opened us - 1

who was a key, 1 who was a man." (159).

Gerald W. Barrax's poem "For Malcolm: After Mecca" illustrates

how the black people continue to be inspired by Malcolm X. A mention

of his name brings them back ;o their consciousness and makes them

ashamed of their condition.

You lie now in many coffins

in parlors where your name

is dropped more hei~vily even than Death

sent you crashing tc, the stage

on which you had exorcised our shame. (224)

Etheridge Knight's "It Was a Funky Deal" is a sudden response to

the unfortunate murder of Malcctlm X. He describes the event as follows.

It was a funky deal.

The only thing real was red,

Red blood around his nd, red beard.

It was a funky deal. (232)

Malcolm X's murder, acc;ording to Etheridge Knight, was

analogous to what Judas had done to Christ.

In the beginning was the word,

And in the end the deed.

Judas did it to Jesus

For the same Herd. Same reason.

yo made them mad, Malcolm. Same reason. (232)

Concluding the poem Knight comments on Malcolm X's eventful

life:

Yo rocked too many boats, man.

Pulled too many coats, man.

Saw through the jive.

You reached the wild guys (232)

Amiri Baraka's "A Poem for Black Hearts" identifies the reason

why Malcolm X was murdered.

For Malcolm's eyes, vrhen they broke

the face of some dumb white man. For

Malcolm's hands raist:d to bless us

all black and strong i11 his image

of ourselves, for Mal(:olmfs words

fire darts, the victor's tireless

thrusts. words hung atove the world

change as it may, he siiid it, and

for this he was killed, .. (255)

In the concluding lines of' the poem Baraka exhorts the black

people to avenge themselves for Mllcolm X's murder:

black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up,

black man, quit whining and stooping, for all of him,

For Great Malcolm a prince of the earth, let nothing

in us rest

until we avenge ourseives for his death, stupid animals

that killed him, let us lever breathe a pure breath if

we fail, and white meti call us faggots till the end of

the earth. (255)

S. E. Anderson's poem "Fcr Malcolm Who Walks in the Eyes of

Our Children" shows how the Miilcolm X legacy endures in the black

American society and how the younger generation identifies him as their

inspiring hero.

Malcolm, flaming cosmic spirit who walks

amongst us, we hear your voice

speaking wisdom in the wind,

we see your vision in the life 1 fires of men,

in our incredible young children

who watch your image

flaming in the sun (445)

Baraka's play The Death of Malcolm X included in New Plavs

190

from the Black Theatre (19691, the screenplay Maloolm X by James

Baldwin and Arnold Perl, and the Malcolm X memorial play by Ann Teer

for which Milford Graves com~osed music are some of the theatrical

works focussing on Malcolm X. tipart from these full-length works, there

have been numerous works in which Malcolm is treated as an important

motif. Countless numbers of poc:ms and plays make references to this

legendary hero, because it is an easy means of evoking an entire world of

ideas related to the new black consciousness.

Besides these literary wclrks, there have been a great deal of

biographical works, memoirs, essays and treatises pertaining to the

Malcolm phenomenon. Remembering Malcolm by Benjamin Karim is a

well-known and widely read mem3ir. "The Legacy of Malcolm X and the

Coming of the Black Nation" and "Malcolm as Ideology" are two Earnous

essays by Baraka. "The Islamic Aspects of the Legacy of Malcolm X by

Samory Rashid and "Islam as a I'astoral in the Life of Malcolm X" by

Abdel Wahab M. Elmessin' are two of the many treatises on the Malcolm

phenomenon from the Muslim world outside.

Spike Lee's immensely su~:cessful film on Malcolm X based on

The Autobiography of Malcolm :I( and the public response to it show

how, even decades after his death, a reference to Malcolm X works

wonderfully and inspires the black society all over America and outside.

The Autobiography of Malcolm :i and the Prison Literature in

America

The Autobiography of Mtilcolm X (1965) published with the

assistance of Alex Haley is an important work deserving special attention

191

in the present context. In fact, it wiis not exclusively an effort of Malcolm

X. Left alone, he would never have come out with this extremely

influential work. It was the result of a series of intimate interviews Mex

Haley had with Malcolm X duri~ig the last few months of his life. A

condition Haley was bound to ol~serve strictly was that he would not

bring about any change in the text dictated to him affecting the meaning

of what Malcolm X said or the sharpness of his style. Yet there is a fairly

long epilogue to the book by Alex Haley in which he describes at length

the genesis of the book and the circumstances in which Malcolm X's

assassination took place along with the events that followed immediately.

The book gives us a beautiful account of Malcolm X's life starting

with his early childhood. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925 as

the son of Reverend Earl Little, a West Indian who organized for Marcus

Gamey's Universal Negro 1mprovc:ment Association, and died tragically

at the hands of the white terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan, Malcolm's

childhood was his early lesson in violence and misery. School was the

next place where he had his first real experience in discrimination. He

was told that, being a black boy, he was not to aspire to become a lawyer.

He had rather train himself as a carpenter or a mason. Malcolm could

neither understand its logic, nor was he ready to come to terms and

reconcile. By that time Malcolm's mother had gone insane because of the

hardships following his father's death, and was sent to an asylum. Every

attempt to keep the family together had failed. Thus with the inevitable

breakdown of the family, and the disenchantment with the school that

followed discriminatory policies, l\.Ialcolm soon became a member of the

Harlem underworld. And in the Haleiem underworld, Malcolm led a life of

absolute moral depravity and delinquency starting with the role of a

shoeshine boy to that of a pimp m.d hustler which finally landed him in

trouble. He was arrested over an alleged charge of burglary and was put

in prison. It was while in Norfolk prison that major transformations

happened to him and the world came to hear about him. The fairly big

library in Norfolk prison taught him most of what he was denied at

school. Coming to know about Elijah Muhammad and his movement

from his brothers and sisters while ::till in prison, and reading whatever he

could come by in the prison library, Malcolm was soon convinced about

Elijah Muhammad's doctrines pertaining to the predicament of the black

man. Thus when, after years, he came out of the prison, he was a

thoroughly transformed person. Eie had become a leader who could

attract huge crowds by wonderfully effective speeches.

Malcolm's account of all these along with the accounts of his

years as a black Muslim leader second only to Elijah Muhammad, his

break with Muhammad,,$ps to Mecca and,Africa and finally his tragic

death at the hands of assassins in Feb, 1965 in a Harlem ballroom while

conducting a political meeting, has been of extremely great interest to the

black as well as white reading public of America and outside ever since

the book was published. It was the story of, as M. S. Handler puts it in the

introduction to the book, "a man who had come Gom the lower depths ...

who had triumphed over his own criminality and his own ignorance to

become a forceful leader and spokt:sman, an uncompromising champion

of his people" (iii).

The book as well as the Inan has been a powehl source of

inspiration for numerous writers and poets in America and outside over

the years. It has inspired hundreds of writers with a new creative urge.

Commenting on the uniqueness 3f the book, M. S. Handler writes:

American autobiographical literature is filled with numerous

accounts of remarkable men who pulled themselves to the

summit by their bootstraps. Few are as poignant as

Malcolni's memoirs. As testimony to the power of

redemption and the force of human personality,

Autobiogra~hv of Malcolm X is a revelation. (xiv)

Besides the significance of the book as testimony to the power of

redemption and the force of human personality on which levels it

appealed to many thousands of its readers, it has been observed to be

significant on two other levels: one, the outlook it presents of America

and the other. its seminal impcrtance in the broader context of a great

body of literature produced by those members of the oppressed classes

who have become artists with words through their experience of being

defined by the state as criminals and spent time physically incarcerated

for their actions or beliefs or social status. Since these two are intimately

interrelated, they have to be treated together.

Prison life has inspired many throughout human history to

produce literary and artistic works of great value. The bitter experiences

of prison life had been of such powerful impact on the imagination of

these writers that the uniqueness of their works led even to the formation

of what is known as the oyster tl~eory of literature. It implies that great art

is like a pearl, something that c.m be produced only out of suffering and

agony. For many of these writers, prison, which denied them all kinds of

freedom, was a place where they experienced a higher level of freedom.

This is revealed from as early a w ~ r k as Richard Lovelace's 1649 prison

poem, "To Althea, from Prison" quoted in H. Bruce Franklin's study:

Slonewalls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for a hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty. (xix)

It is perhaps because of tht: institution of slavery and the peculiar

social circumstances engendered by it that a considerably great portion of

the world's prison literature has been produced in America. It was H.

Bruce Franklin who as early as 1!)78 published for the first time a work

based on extensive research on thc: literature produced in America by the

victimized criminals in the American prisons and penitentiaries. In his

work The Victim as Criminal anti Artist: Literature from the American

&, Franklin identifies a huge body of literature of this category

which he labels "Prison Literature." In a later edition of the book he has

furnished an extensive annotated bibliography of published works by

American prisoners and ex-prisont:rs from 1798 to 1988.

An interesting informatim yielded by Franklin's study of

American prison literature is that there was a noticeable impact of the

nationalist Islam upsurge of the 1060s and 1970s on the prison literature

of the ~eriod. It was further made clear that Malcolm X's autobiography

had a seminal role in the creation of this trend in the prison literature.

Franklin observes:

Contemporary American prison literature can be dated from

The Autobiograph~ of Malcolm X. Malcolm X has a unique

place in the social thought of the Afro-American people.

One of the many Black "common criminals" awakened by

"the Nation of Islam" since the late 1940s Malcolm

advanced beyond thd: mid 1960s' Muslim ideology to make

crucial discoveries about himself as a black man and as a

criminal in America about his people, about the history of

America and its alternative for the future. These discoveries

still define the frontic:rs of both prison literature and much of

our subsequent experiences as a nation-state. (xi-xxii)

Quite central to Malcolm's outlook in the Autobionravhy is the

idea that America as a whole itself is the prison house of the black

people. Franklin obsewes:

Malcolm X relates his own prison background to American

society in these terms: "Don't be shocked when I say that I

was in prison. You1.-e still in prison. That's what America

means: prison.'' (245)

In fact, this was, in a sen:je, the essence of what Marcus Garvey,

Drew Ali, Du Bois and Elijah lvluhammad had been telling the black

people of America over the years. Franklin further explains Malcolm's

point:

From the point of \iew of the Afro-American experience,

imprisonment is first of all the loss of a people's freedom.

The question of individual freedom, class freedom, and even

of human Geedom derive Gom ':at social imprisonment.

From this point of view ~merican society as a whole

constitutes the primary prison. The Afro-American

experience started in chains in the prison of slave ship. (244)

Following Malcolm X. a host of black American prison writers

produced a quite big chunk of prison literature sharing this general

outlook and subscribing to Malcolm's ideology in the next few decades.

The very character of the black prison writings in America has been thus

determined for years by Malcolm :r(. Malcolm X's influence on the black

inmates of American prisons an4 in turn, on their writings only increased

after his death. Franklin remarks: "After the assassination of Malcolm,

prison literature acknowledged him as both its political and spiritual

leader" (240).

Among the prominent writers of this genre are Eldridge Cleaver,

Bobby Seale, Richard Clark, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Assata

Shakur, Sanaika Shakur and Etheridge Knight. Of these, writers like

Eldridge Cleaver, Richard Clark and Sanaika Shakur had converted to

Islam and become followers of Malcolm X while they were still in prison.

Their works, therefore, like Malcolm's Autobioara~hv, tell among other

things how Islam transformed them completely. Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Richard Clark's The Brothers of Attica, Assata Shakur's &I

Autobiogra~hy and Sanaika flhakur 1 Codiscot's Monster: the

Autobiography of a Gang Member are especially noted for the accounts

of their Islam experience and their views on the American society in

general.

The other writers mentioned above and those like Angela Davis,

197

Som Melville, Jade Cook, Barbara Deming, Howard Levy, David Reed,

John Sinclair, T. J. Reddy, David Harris, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan

and Hucy Newton who have made noteworthy contributions to this genre

of American literature, although they have not converted to Islam, still

follow Malcolm X in his outlook end view the predicament of American

Blacks in more or less the same way. Angela Davis' If They Come in the

Morning: Voices of Resistance, George Jackson's Soledad Brother,

Etheridge Knight's Poems from P r i m and Bobby Seale's Seize the Time

reveal, besides this fact, that prison writings of the period by black

Americans are a coherent body of iterature, not just works by individual

criminals, and persons, but the voice of a long-oppressed community

coming to their own.

Thus, the black American literature since the early 1960s in all its

diverse generic forms reflects the Islam experience of the period in a

tremendously discernible way. This trend in literature is persistently

continuing as the trend in favour of Islam in the black community takes

new dimensions of growth. And in the coming years, serious critical

attention on this aspect of black American literature will become

necessary.