by Les Payne with Tamara Payne
Liveright Publishing
10/19/2021, paperback
SKU: 9781324091059
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to create an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic, National Book Award-winning biography, which interweaves previously unknown details of Malcolm X's life -- from harrowing Depression-era vignettes to a moment-by-moment retelling of the 1965 assassination -- into an extraordinary account that contextualizes Malcolm X's life against the wider currents of American history. Bookended by essays from Tamara Payne, Payne's daughter and primary researcher, who heroically completed the biography after her father's death in 2018, The Dead Are Arising affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.
Reviews:
...this kind of textured attention to Black life and community, whether in Omaha or Boston, Atlanta or Accra, distinguishes Les Payne’s masterful biography, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X." -- The Atlantic
"[The] definitive biography of Malcolm X." -- NPR
About the Contributors:
Les Payne (1941-2018) was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. He served as an editor and columnist at Newsday and was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Tamara Payne acted as Les Payne's principal researcher. She lives in New York.