On Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in Prison

Episode Transcript

Donald Washington The Autobiography of Malcolm X was one of those things that helped me see things differently. That helped me see who I was, where I was, and what I could be.

Adwoa Adusei This is Donald Washington. He works at Brooklyn Public Library as a re-entry navigator, helping patrons who were recently incarcerated get connected to resources on the outside.

Virginia Marshall Donald has a unique perspective on this work because he was incarcerated, too.

Donald Washington I've been out for about six and a half years now.  And during my incarceration, there were a number of older gentlemen who were trying to kind of school the younger folks, myself included. Give us a sense of culture, a sense of responsibility, trying to get us to calm down and be better people. And there were a number of books that I was given over a period of time, and one of the first ones was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I remember while I was going through the process of reading it …

[Noisy jail sound]

Like, I'm able to kind of, like, block everything out while I'm reading things, so even being in a noisy housing block I'm able to kinda zone, zone those things out.

[Banging and echoes cut out]

Being in prison was one of the first times where I was in a situation where I didn't have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter. It’s like, it gave me that opportunity to at least work towards self-actualization because I'm not worried about my basic needs. There were some messages that were lost that I got from Malcolm X's autobiography and others. There was a history that I didn't have.

[Theme music]

From the book, I got a greater sense of my responsibility for my community. Of course, this sense of determination, to recognize if he was able to do it, then I could do it. And then this whole notion that he expressed of — if a person couldn't go to a university, the best place you could go would be to prison. I went into prison with an eighth grade education. I came out with a graduate degree.

Virginia Marshall Donald isn’t the only person who found purpose and meaning in Malcolm X’s story while incarcerated. In fact, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of the most commonly read books in jails and prisons across America.

Automated voice This is a prepaid collect call from … Shaquis …. an incarcerated individual at New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Virginia Marshall When I sat down with Donald back in March, he wanted to call his friend Shaquis Knowles because he also had a story about how The Autobiography of Malcolm X changed his life.

Automated voice To accept charges press one. To refuse charges press … [beep]

Donald Washington Peace, peace, here we go, we're here.

Shaquis Knowles Hey, how you doing?

Virginia Marshall Shaquis is currently incarcerated at Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York. And, just a note for listeners: the audio isn’t super clear, since Shaquis was calling from his tablet in his jail cell. So, you might hear some feedback. We’ll let Shaquis and Donald take it from here.

Shaquis Knowles So I’ll just jump into my story. Around 2012, I was in a GED class. Being in GED was important because I came in illiterate. It was very difficult. I had a form of dyslexia, but I was kind of ashamed to tell people what I was seeing, and stuff like that. Cuz I had a very low self esteem. A lot of people didn't know that I couldn't read. And a brother offered, he said you know, you gotta read positive things. You should read Malcolm X. And the Malcolm X book, it was like, an eye-opener because the education that he did, like he points out that it could be a university not only is it a prison — because you’re here — but your mind, you could transcend this space through the mind.

Donald Washington Do you feel that reading that book and educating yourself has helped you find a sense of purpose? Because you've been in since 17, the past 23 years, with the 45-year-to-life sentence. A lot of people might just give up all hope at that point. Do you feel like, was there anything that you found in the book that encourages you?

Shaquis Knowles Yeah, the book shows us that this is not the end of the road. Even in this situation, you still must try to be a better human being. Even if I don't get out of this place, I still have to make myself a better person.

[Theme music]

Adwoa Adusei There are so many reasons to read – and reread – The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But for this episode, we’re revisiting the book with the perspectives of readers who are, or were, incarcerated. Because Malcolm X’s story isn’t just radical for its narrative of change and self-improvement; it also encourages readers to think more critically about the prison system itself.

Shaquis Knowles This is a place where I don't believe it was meant for people to spend life in. It was a place for people to be rehabilitated, to go back inside, to contribute. And, somewhere down the line that changed to warehousing us. And, imagine if Malcolm would have been held in prison? The contribute that he did would have been gone. So you have a lot of individuals that have potential as Malcolm in here stuck, lying away for years, that might not get the opportunity if the people don't do something.

Adwoa Adusei From Brooklyn Public Library, this is Borrowed and Returned: revisiting the books that changed us, and changed America, too. I’m Adwoa Adusei, librarian at BPL’s Library for Arts and Culture.

Virginia Marshall And I’m Virginia Marshall, audio producer at Brooklyn Public Library. Today’s episode: How The Autobiography of Malcolm X changed the conversation about the carceral system.

[Theme music out]

Virginia Marshall The Autobiography of Malcolm X is not actually an autobiography, though it is written in the first person. Alex Haley, the writer, conducted a series of interviews with Malcolm X between 1963 and 1965, the year that Malcolm was assassinated. The book came out nine months after Malcolm’s death, in October of 1965, and it was an immediate success. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the first few years, and received critical acclaim.

Dominique Jean-Louis It is clear that Alex Haley, you know, has a particular perspective on the world, but also has a particular gift for narrating not just a character's journey, but something specific about Black history and just experiences of pain and self-discovery.

Adwoa Adusei This is Dominique Jean-Louis, the chief historian at the Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library. She gave us an overview of the life of Alex Haley, a writer who would later become famous for his 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which Dominique said really shook up the American conversation on ancestry, race, and the lasting impact of slavery.

Virginia Marshall But before all that, Alex Haley was a writer who wanted to tell a compelling story about a man who was in the mid-1960s one of the most visible and controversial figures in the Black Power movement. Haley wanted to write a story of transformation, tracking one man’s life from criminal, to devout Muslim, to leader of a political movement. And, like all great transformational stories, Haley decided to start at the beginning.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei The man who would later become Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the fourth of seven children, and he had a tough childhood. His father was a follower of Marcus Garvey and a Baptist preacher who died when Malcolm was young. And his mother, an immigrant from Grenada in the Caribbean, struggled with mental illness. Malcolm ended up dropping out of high school at 14 and going to live with a half-sister in Boston. He became involved with gambling, pimping, and burglary there, which led to his arrest and sentencing in 1946, when he was just 21 years old.

Virginia Marshall Over the next six years, he was shuffled between Charlestown State Prison and Norfolk Prison, both in the Boston area. This part of his life takes up just two chapters about a third of the way through his autobiography. But it’s a powerful section for a number of reasons. For one, Malcolm re-makes himself through reading while he’s incarcerated. What Donald said about prison being a time when he didn’t have to worry about food, clothing and shelter — the same was true for Malcolm X. Here’s Dominique again.

Dominique Jean-Louis Everyone should have the opportunity to center learning and self-discovery, like 24 hours a day, right? Theoretically, that is what school is supposed to be, when you’re encountering ideas that shape your sense of self. But if that's an environment that, because of structural factors, is hostile to you, or you don't have great access to — then maybe school doesn't become the place where you can self-actualize and really center your own development in that way. Surely there must be another way for that to exist then just, you know, either you get it in school and if you don't get it, then you miss your chance or you have to go to prison? Like, hopefully we can find other mechanisms in our culture where people can encounter ideas.

Adwoa Adusei Still, reading the sections of Malcolm X’s autobiography where he is incarcerated are compelling. It’s a moment of true discovery.

Dominique Jean-Louis There's something about those passages in the book when he's first becoming a Muslim and becoming a reader kind of simultaneously, you almost don't want that part of the book to end. And you like, you want Malcolm to get out of prison. You don't want him to be, you know, locked away and caged. But, there's something in that section that just feels so exciting because it’s clearly his life changing that you almost want to spend pages and pages and pages in that section.

Adwoa Adusei Here’s a paragraph from Chapter 11, “Saved,” read by Donald Washington.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long-dormant craving to be mentally alive. …  Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.’

[Music]

Dominique Jean-Louis One of my favorite ways to frame this book and ways to put it into a conversation with other texts is, you know, like — big word incoming alert — but, autodidacticism, right? That some people really excel in the environment of a classroom or other spaces where learning is, you know, either competitive or there's a reward for it. And I think in the Black tradition, there's so many people for whom maybe they excelled in the classroom, but maybe their space to encounter ideas and intellectualism and the power of language isn't in schools, but on their own, in kind of self-directed, serious study.

Virginia Marshall One of the most famous parts of the book is the passage where Malcolm talks about reading the dictionary word by word while he’s incarcerated. Shaquis said he did this at one point, as did many others he knows. And the tradition extends beyond Malcolm X. There’s a rich tradition in hip-hop of reading the dictionary and thesaurus.

Adwoa Adusei Kendrick Lamar famously got turned onto writing lyrics when his seventh grade teacher gave him a thesaurus to read. And then there’s the rapper Papoose. Here he is on a British interview show The Big Narstie in 2022.

Papoose I read at a young age that Malcolm X read the entire dictionary. And you said, you know what, I want to try that. And when I started reading the dictionary, that’s when I created “Alphabetical Slaughter”

Dominique Jean-Louis We like to think about hip-hop as it just comes from the soul. And you know, you can't fake it. But a lot of these guys are reading the thesaurus. And so that deep love for language is so part of the Black American tradition. And you see it both in the way that Alex Haley writes, and the way that Malcolm X lives his life.

Adwoa Adusei Another reason why the chapters in prison are such an essential part of the book is that Malcolm discovers the Nation of Islam while he’s incarcerated, and decides to convert. So, most of the book is devoutly Muslim.

Dominique Jean-Louis As far as I know, there's nothing before this text or even really after that encourages America to think about how a life that is centered in Muslim faith can also be deeply centered in American history and American politics. This book is one of the most assigned, most-read books of classic American literature. And I think that really changes how America story-tells about itself.

Adwoa Adusei Over the course of the book, Malcolm has an evolving relationship with the Nation of Islam, a religious organization founded in the US in 1930. He was a spokesperson for the Nation for much of his adult life, but in 1964, while Malcolm was deep into his interviews with Alex Haley, he had a falling out with the Nation’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm was ousted as a spokesperson, and the latter half of the book takes a different perspective on the Nation of Islam, marking yet another transformation in his autobiography.

Dominique Jean-Louis It's an invitation to change your mind. That, with new information, as your life evolves and you get exposed to new people, new ideas, how you feel about your own path changes. And I think we're in a moment now where that's never been more valuable in terms of recentering … Well, what is it that I believe? And what perspective can I gain to help me through this moment?

[Music]

Reginald Dwayne Betts Malcolm X is somebody who you can see changing his mind quite often.

Virginia Marshall This is Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet, lawyer, and founder of an organization called Freedom Reads.

Reginald Dwayne Betts And it's not just from, you know, having a criminal mind to being more conscious. It is going through different phases and deeply understanding that, like, it is a kind of brotherhood that actually extends beyond race. And I personally think that's a powerful sentiment given how exhausted I am with the same narratives that keep my friends in prison.

Virginia Marshall Betts is yet another person who felt that books changed him while he was incarcerated. And it wasn’t just The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Reginald Dwayne Betts When I got into prison and I was looking for solace, I realized that I had been finding solace in books for a very, very long time, and that it just made sense for me to lean on books. You know, people bought books. People traded books. People went to the library. If there was a library. You found books in places. I mean, it was the same way that we find books here. The thing was it was more desperate, and oftentimes libraries might not exist or they might not be well-stocked. You go to the library, you can only spend 30 minutes there. So, you become familiar with the sections. You can’t just browse fiction. Even if you browse … see, I know 811. 811 is poetry. Because every time I went to the library, I went to the same section. And now if you was interested in philosophy, that might be in the 200s, fiction might be in like 700s, but the point is — you got 30 minutes. And there might only be 40 books in your section, but if you are committed to the art that's in that section, every time you get 30 minutes, that's the only section you could go to.

Adwoa Adusei That limitation in what he could read and how often was what made Reginald Dwayne Betts create Freedom Libraries, which are bookshelves that are permanently installed in prisons, full of all kinds of books.

Reginald Dwayne Betts One of the things I imagine my work is doing is trying to give people a broader scope of the books that they could encounter, a broader scope of the books that they might come to love. Because I never read Homer in prison. You know, I never read enough Shakespeare in prison. I don’t even know if I read Shakespeare in prison at all. And so there’s huge gaps in my reading that wouldn't have been gaps if I would have had maybe access to some of the things that Freedom Reads provides to folks on the inside.

Adwoa Adusei And the first Freedom Library was installed in 2021 at Norfolk Prison, in what is believed to be Malcolm X’s former cell.

Reginald Dwayne Betts It was by happenstance that that ended up being the prison where Malcolm X served his time. But honestly, I want to give Superintendent Alves all of the credit. He once said that he heard a quote that said, ‘When you give a home a library, you give it a soul.’ And I just found that deeply meaning and moving, because the work of putting the first Freedom Library in MCI Norfolk required them to gut a prison cell. And to say that we're gonna rip out the bunks where we charge men with sleeping through the nights as they serve out their sentence, and instead replace it with literature that might allow them to soar past the past crimes, to soar past that sentence — is a powerful thing and a moving thing.

Adwoa Adusei Freedom Reads has installed more than 400 libraries in 40 prisons across 13 states. But Betts said his goal is to reach every prison in the United States. Because it matters that people who are incarcerated have access to expand their minds and their futures. It’s something that we know is extremely important here in Brooklyn, too.

Virginia Marshall Cool, so do you want to start … Where are you taking me?

Mia Vasquez I’m taking you to our collections room …

Virginia Marshall Tucked away on the second floor of Williamsburg Library, there’s a smaller, hidden library with books that aren’t in the public catalog.

Mia Vasquez What we’re looking at right now is our sci-fi section.

Virginia Marshall This is Mia Vasquez. They’re an outreach assistant with jail and prison services at Brooklyn Public Library. They provide library service on Rikers Island and answer correspondence letters from inmates across New York State.

Mia Vasquez Yeah, we have thousands of books…

Virginia Marshall Mia showed me around, pointing out urban fiction, thrillers, political history, shelves of sci-fi novels, and test prep books.

Mia Vasquez But this is all of the overstock of Malcolm X right here.

Virginia Marshall Oh, yup. I have that copy…

Virginia Marshall It’s not really a hidden library, it’s more a specialized library made up of thousands of books, all intended for people incarcerated at Rikers Island. The books have been selected and curated based on years of hearing from inmates about what they want to read.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei Twice a week, Mia and the rest of the jail and prison services team bring hundreds of books to one of the centers at Rikers. Library workers at New York Public and Queens Public Library serve two other centers at Rikers on other days of the week. They take public transportation – sometimes as many as four transfers between buses and trains – to get to Rikers, all while schlepping their clear plastic rolling backpacks filled with books.

Virginia Marshall The Rikers library doesn’t have any book shelves. It’s a cafeteria-like space between the grievance office and the social services office, a space that can be fairly chaotic and noisy, with doors slamming and people shouting as men are brought in groups to use the library.

[Noisy jail sounds]

Joey Morris It's very makeshift. We have some tubs with some comics and manga, and like, try our best to make a library.

Virginia Marshall This is Joey, another outreach associate with BPL’s Jail and Prison services.

Joey Morris We'll have one bench be, like, a newsstand and bring different newspapers there. We'll have another bench be a resource table. And then, like, we have two library carts, roughly organized by genre.

Mia Vasquez Everyone is, like, so excited for us to come in.

Virginia Marshall Mia again.

Mia Vasquez We are the thing that they look forward to. The men come in, and it's like, ‘Yo, the library's here! The library's here!’ And some of the men, they kind of skip the sign-in process to race to the book cart and find their book, their three books for the day.

Virginia Marshall One of the more overlooked facts of incarceration is that access to information is very limited on the inside. There’s no internet access, and with limited library time, inmates can feel desperate for books and information — no matter the topic. Here’s Joey again.

Joey Morris We are kind of their internet. So sometimes it'll be like a dispute in the house. Like, oh, like, I remember I had a question years ago. Like, ‘Oh, has LeBron James ever lost in a game seven?’ Or whatever. And people were arguing over it. So you, like, look it up for them.

Adwoa Adusei With all the limits on communication and information, access to books becomes that much more important. There’s the library, of course, but when you actually own a book and can keep it with you — there’s an impulse to take care of that book, and to pass it around to people you think would really value the book as much as you do.

Virginia Marshall For Donald Washington, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was one of those precious books. When he got out of prison more than six years ago, his copy of The Autobiography didn’t come with him.

Donald Washington Just because I felt like someone else could use it. Things that were important like that, I actually left in the max because, you know, you have people who they're serving natural life or like, like Shaquim Knowles, who is serving 45 to life. And, you know, it's a really long time. So, they have the opportunity to then pass those sorts of things over.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei Donald partially credits Malcolm X’s autobiography for leading him to where he is today, working at Brooklyn Public Library and helping other people who’ve been impacted by incarceration to find their footing on the outside.

Donald Washington You know, I'm not going to sit here and say I'm standing next to Malcolm, but I know I'm in a different place than I was. And just seeing where he came from to where he went — was key. And then it was also one of those books that you will want to further pass on, right? So it's like that allegory of the cave, right, once you kind of see things for what they are, you want to share that with other people.

Virginia Marshall And you actually have the same glasses as him.

Donald Washington Yeah. Yeah I get that. I sometimes hear that. My fiancé actually got me these, and I think it may have been for that reason. [Laughs]

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei We’re going to release our full interview with Reginald Dwayne Betts next week as a bonus episode. Betts had so much more to say about poetry and the power of reading, and we couldn’t fit it all into this episode.

Virginia Marshall To learn more about Freedom Reads, or the work that Brooklyn Public Library does at Rikers and other jails and prisons across New York State, head to our show notes, where we’ve added a few links. One way you can help Justice Initiative’s efforts here at BPL is by donating books to our jail and prison collection. We’ve included a guide about the books we’re looking for and where to bring them in our show notes as well.

Adwoa Adusei While you’re checking out those links, you should also watch Inside Story, which is a video series from The Marshall Project directed and produced by Donald Washington. It’s a fantastic series that is created by people who are incarcerated. Also, Book Riot has a great series called Reading and Resistance which include stories about censorship in prison libraries. And finally, we have a book list with books that were mentioned in this episode, and more. We’ll put links to all of those things in our show notes.

Virginia Marshall Our next full episode — after the bonus interview with Reginald Dwayne Betts — will come out in two weeks. It will be all about the radical historian Howard Zinn and A People’s History of the United States.

[Music]

Don Dumas You see a lot of people fighting to control what is taught in our history classes. And that’s because history has the power to teach people, to teach students, how to resist.

Virginia Marshall Borrowed and Returned is a production of Brooklyn Public Library. It’s written and produced by me, Virginia Marshall, and co-hosted with Adwoa Adusei. You can read a transcript of this episode and our show notes at BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts.  

Adwoa Adusei Brooklyn Public Library relies on the support of individuals for many of its most critical programs and services. To make a gift, please go to BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] donate. Our Borrowed advisory team is made up of Fritzi Bodenheimer, Nick Higgins, Robin Lester Kenton, and Damaris Olivo. Our marketing and design team for this series includes Laurie Elvove, Ashley Gill, Jennifer Proffitt, Lauren Rochford and Leila Taylor.

Virginia Marshall That’s it for this episode. Until next time … keep re-reading.