Malcolm Lives!

Malcolm Lives! is a biography of Malcolm X written for young readers by Ibram X. Kendi, the National Book Award-winning author. It is presented as the first major biography of Malcolm X aimed at young people in more than thirty years. The book appears one hundred years after Malcolm's birth in 1925, and it will suit readers who enjoyed Stamped: A Remix by Kendi with Jason Reynolds.

The story begins with a boyhood marked by violence, loss, hunger, foster care, racism and time spent incarcerated. Malcolm came through all of it to leave a lasting mark on the world as a Black Muslim, a family man and a revolutionary. Kendi presents his life as proof of what every human being can become, and he addresses the reader directly with that message.

The writing borrows from Malcolm's own oratory, using repetition and rhetoric, and the short, quick chapters are meant to echo his famously fast walk. Young readers also get a close look at his world through many previously unpublished letters, notes, flyers and photographs, along with extensive source notes. The book treats Malcolm's antiracist legacy as still alive today.