Growing Up X

April 8, 2002
One of Malcolm X's six daughters, Shabazz was two when he was assassinated in February 1965. The bulk of the book covers the day-to-day specifics of Shabazz's childhood and adolescence as a middle-class African-American Muslim girl, punctuated by small brushes with her parents' past. Malcolm X is justifiably sentimentalized via the fragmentary memories and second-hand stories of Shabazz's childhood perspective (including a visit to the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali's training camp). Shabazz's mother, Dr. Betty Shabazz, eventually a professor of health administration at Medgar Evers College, is a constant presence in the book; "Mommy" shepherds Ilyasah and the other girls through school, and herself through graduate work, with "amazing strength and perseverance." Ilyasah's often ordinary existence is rendered in unadorned prose (to the point of listing teachers she had in various schools or chronicling a standoff with neighborhood girls), and her insights into herself and those around her can be cursory (a rape is covered in two pages) if honestly rendered. Shabazz is working on a book about her parents, which may explain why it sometimes feels like anecdotes and information are being held back. By the time Ilyasah comes to a more nuanced understanding of her identity as the daughter of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz is killed by a fire set by one of Ilyasah's nephews in 1997. The book ends there, with exhortations that "Life is not a destination; it is a journey." (May)Forecast:Despite this memoir's thinness, it should generate a great deal of attention, not least via a 15-city author tour and a host of media appearances. Media interest in Islam has not resulted in a resurgence of interest in the Nation of Islam, but this book could be a first step, though it is far from a political or religious history.

May 1, 2002
The third of the six daughters of assassinated Black Muslim leader Malcolm X (or Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) and Dr. Betty Dean Sanders, Shabazz reminisces about her childhood and life in the 32 years between her father's being gunned down while speaking at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in 1965 and her mother's dying of injuries suffered in a house fire in 1997. Two years old when her father died, Ilyasah has only a few remembered moments with him, but she offers much more to correct what she views as the usually fragmented and false understanding of him and his contribution to America and the world. While promoting her father's legacy as a messenger of black self-assurance, self-respect, and self-defense, Ilyasah also argues that great men marry great women, for her true hero is her mother. "Mommy" dominates the narrative, and her often hard-learned lessons carry the character and course of the journey toward the self-identity shared here. This interesting memoir, the first by any of the children of Malcolm X, is valuable for rounding out our understanding of the man and his milieu. Recommended for collections on African American biography. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/02.] Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2002
The daughter of Malcolm X, only two when he was assassinated, describes what life was like without her father.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2002
Adult/High School-Shabazz was two years old when her father was murdered in the presence of his young family, and she describes how her mother heroically raised her and her sisters in his absence. Betty Shabazz got help from friends and wealthy celebrities to buy a big, beautiful home in Mt. Vernon, NY, after the Nation of Islam evicted them from the small house it had provided during Malcolm X's ministry. The girls led comfortable, sheltered, upper-middle-class lives, complete with housekeepers, chauffeured cars, exclusive social clubs, and expensive, predominantly white private schools and summer camps. In her well-meaning attempts to protect her daughters from emotional trauma, their mother didn't teach them anything about their father's work and philosophy. Shabazz was in college when she read The Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time. The author obviously idolizes her mother, who was always studying and working hard to provide for her daughters in style, but also indicates that she was controlling-even to the point of selecting Shabazz's college and dismissing her daughter's expressed desire to attend a black university. Teens who have been inspired by the life and speeches of Malcolm X will undoubtedly find this memoir interesting.-Joyce Fay Fletcher, Rippon Middle School, Prince William County, VA

Copyright 2002 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2002
Despite the title of this book and its cover photo--which depicts the author in the arms of her father, Malcolm X--this memoir tells us more about growing up as the daughter of Betty Shabazz. Sheltered by her powerful mother, Ilyasah Shabazz attends predominantly white, private schools, and although she is raised Muslim, she is unschooled in racial matters. As a well-connected young adult, she hangs out with celebrities and flirts with modeling, acting, teaching, entrepreneurship, and work as a publicist--the same stuff we might expect from the child of a TV executive, not of black activists. Ilyasah's struggle is to come into her own as a woman (significantly and disconcertingly, she calls her mother "Mommy" throughout) and to make sense of the legacy of her father, who was assassinated in front of her when she was only two. Measured against even snippets of Malcolm X's words and deeds, and Betty Shabazz's tireless sacrifice, self-improvement, and activism, their daughter's experiences and the lessons she offers seem relatively mundane, but that's a story in itself. This short, anecdotal book is not terribly well written, but between the lines a portrait emerges of the weighty burden of expectations on the children of famous people, how the expectation to do " something" can make them falter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)