Les Payne.
LES & TAMARA PAYNE: MALCOLM X BIOGRAPHY
THE DEAD ARE ARISING: THE LIFE OF MALCOLM x (2020)
Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
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This book is the result of a thirty year quest by Les Payne to track down and interview people who had known Malcolm X. A Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Payne spoke to family members, street friends, cellmates, policemen and political leaders. Sadly he died before the book was finished, and it was completed by his daughter Tamara, who had acted as his researcher. The story follows Malcolm X from his origins as a minor criminal in Harlem and Boston in the 1930s to his conversion to Islam while in a Massachussetts prison.
The New York Times described the book as: ‘A new life of Malcolm X brimming with detail, insight and feeling.’ Tfhe Guardian reviewed it thus: ‘The Dead Are Arising sets out to provide a much fuller picture of the life and death of Malcolm X, drawing on interviews with his friends and family to assess his contribution in the context of the times. The book is based on decades of painstaking research by Les Payne, who died before it was completed, and his daughter Tamara.’
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Les Payne (born 1941) grew up in Alabama, then moved with his mother to Hartford Connecticut. He graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in English, the first member of his family to attend college. He wanted a career in journalism, but found that as an African American there were no opportunities at mainstream newspapers or magazines. He instead joined the US Army, being promoted to the rank of captain. He worked there as an information officer writing general’s speeches and running an army newspaper. After leaving the army he had a distinguished career at Newsday, rising to become national editor and assistant editor for foreign and national news. Alongside his journalism he wrote several books, including his biography of Malcolm which, after Payne’s death, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
