I am happy to have listened to the audiobook. It is not what I expected (I mistook it for a different novel). This is the most information I've ever received on Malcolm X. Everything about Islam, as well, was novel to me. My knowledge of Islam is limited to what I've learned through having Muslim friends (primarily Ali) as well as watching Muslim content creators. I had no idea that there was an entire movement in Islam for embracing black Americans and reclaiming the land of the whites.

It has been a topic of curiosity for me (how religious African Americans are when the religion belongs to their enslavers). Listening to James Baldwin's memoir, especially the accounts of his youth, gave me a better idea as to why this might be so, though I am still woefully uninformed. I will look into his other works and perhaps more on Malcolm X in particular who I know next to nothing about. 

It was interesting for me to listen to this as an Asian American. Racism towards African Americans and Asian Americans has always been different. I felt it when he said he could not deny others' experiences, especially when his examples were exceptions and not the rule. Of course I am in agreement with him that hatred either way is unproductive.

Something that made me think differently: he brought up the point that when vying for equality, it is always assumed that blacks must be raised equal to whites. But why? This forced me to look at things differently. Why is it not that white are finally growing more equal to blacks in terms of their humanity? Of course they have always held the power. But at what cost? I will think about this for a while.

His letter at the beginning was sad. There is surely a better word to describe it but it evades my vocabulary as of now. As a child, and also as someone with no interest in having and/or raising children, I seldom think of the experience of parenting from a parent's perspective. Hearing the words he had, the care and concern, made me think of all the people who were forced to bring their children up in a world that hated them, what that might do to the child, and what it might do to the parent.

The narrator had a nice, soothing voice that held the right amount of gravity for the subject matter. Would recommend, even if you are uneducated.