MALCOLM X

First of all, I would like to say that I actually like this book unlike other books that the school required us to read. It described the lives of how African Americans lived back then. It contained little details, such as description of ghetto, conk, zoot suit, and so on. It also showed the class system within African Americans themselves, which shocked me. I never thought before that these people would ignore their own race for not being able to work for whites. Since they all went through the hard time together, I thought they would be more united. Also, if I were an African American of that time, I would rebel to work for whites, who enslaved my ancestors. I would feel insulted, ashamed, and disgraceful that I still had to work for whites even after slavery was abolished. However, the book explained how blacks who worked for whites were considered to be in higher class, which really saddened me. 

The first quote that I felt touched when the author wrote, "My father had always been very strongly against credit. 'Credit is the first way into debt and back into slavery,' he had always said" (Haley 12). From this quote, I could almost feel African Americans' fear to go back to being slaves again.

Then, later, there was a quote that stated, "Japanese planes had just bombed a place called Pearl Harbor" (Haley 72). By this time, I was wondering the time period that this book was taking place. Then that quote was so unexpected that I was astonished after I read it. It took me a few seconds to absorb what it had said. It also awestruck me how careless he sounded. The quote almost sounded as though he was talking about another country that was irrelevant to him. If I were him, I would have flipped out if I heard that my country was just attacked by an enemy. However, his reaction was that he was relieved that people did not notice his tardy because of the attack. This just made me think that maybe African Americans, generally speaking, during this time period  did not love, respect, and honor the nation because of events that they went through.