Betty before X

Ilyasah Shabazz

Book - 2018

Raised by her aunt until she is six, Betty, who will later marry Malcolm X, joins her mother and stepfamily in 1940s Detroit, where she learns about the civil rights movement.

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Subjects
Genres
Historical fiction
Published
New York : Farrar Straus Giroux 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Ilyasah Shabazz (author)
Other Authors
Renée Watson (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
248 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780374306106
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

LET US REVIEW what is so good about Denis Johnson. I have often performed this exercise, with a modicum of writerly envy, over the decades of reading his work: What exactly is the alchemical magic in these pages? Everyone who started writing seriously in the 1980s or 1990s can tell you where he or she first consumed the morsels that eventually made up "Jesus' Son," Johnson's breakthrough 1992 story collection. To behold those lines for the first time was to see language unaccountably capturing emotions in a way unfamiliar in recent American prose. Johnson once noted that he was working under the star of Isaac Babel while writing "Jesus' Son," and it showed; just as Babel saw (for example) the Russian sunset as others had not previously, Johnson transformed his misfits and heroin addicts until they became like protagonists from the time of epics. "Angels," Johnson's 1983 debut novel, was similarly revelatory - making the homely backdrop of a Greyhound bus journey suddenly appropriate to the highest American literature. If Johnson sometimes stumbled in later books (he was prolific), they were exceptions in a long, restless and varied career that included not only fiction but plays, nonfiction and some impressive poetry collections. (I recommend "The Incognito Lounge.") What made the effective books so effective? In part, it is the consciousness of mortality found everywhere in his best work. This is the guy, after all, who wrote "Resuscitation of a Hanged Man" and "Already Dead." It is the rare Denis Johnson work that doesn't explicitly take up end-of-life questions. From the death-row sequences of "Angels" to the murder and car crashes and heroin addiction of "Jesus' Son" to the Vietnam War setting of "Tree of Smoke," his 2007 National Book Award-winning novel, there is ever a wafting of mortal fumes across Johnson's paragraphs. "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden," Johnson's new and presumably final collection - he died from liver cancer in May - is no outlier. Without exception the five stories that make up this volume, averaging about 40 pages each, feature intimations of mortality. There's the former wife of the adman narrator, in the title story, who telephones to tell our man she's dying, but without specifying which former wife she is. ("In the middle of this," he notes, "I began wondering, most uncomfortably, in fact with a dizzy, sweating anxiety, if I'd made a mistake.") There are the murderous, delusional inmates of a county lockup in "Strangler Bob," and the fanciful and grim formulations about Elvis and his lost twin that haunt "Doppelgänger, Poltergeist," the last story in the volume. Throughout is Johnson's familiar anguish at our passing over. What makes "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" different is that in this case Johnson knew his own time was short, and embarked on his material with an admirable and pitiless openness he conveys through his characters: "It's plain to you that at the time I wrote this, I'm not dead," one says. "But maybe by the time you read it." The movement across the whole of the collection echoes Dante: down, concentrically, into the revelations of illness and death, to "the phase in which these visits to emergency rooms and clinics increased in frequency and by now have become commonplace." Before it gets there, though, it sets the mood, beginning with the title story and its apparently unrelated fragments - some of them about advertising and some featuring blunt episodes of sex and death like something out of a late 1960s Jerzy Kosinski novel. This is followed by a weaker set piece about rehab, "The Starlight on Idaho"; reading it, I worried that the presumably ill and suffering author was too consumed with his difficulties to reach his most fertile core. But then comes "Strangler Bob," in which Dink, the narrator (all of the stories are in the first person), tries to reckon not only with his reduced circumstances but with a prophecy, courtesy of his cellmate in county lockup, that he and two felonious acquaintances will one day commit a murder. It's all very fun and strange, with glimmers of the old Johnson at work. And then that Johnson breaks through in a big way, in a story boldly and maybe hopefully titled "Triumph Over the Grave," and suddenly every mild reservation you might have had is forgotten. Suddenly, with exceptional luminosity, there is an unveiling. "Triumph" begins as a journal entry in a slightly stiff present tense, but then tumbles backward into a story within the story about a fellow writer the narrator (who is not quite Johnson himself, but certainly a near relation) knew in Austin, Tex., during a time of teaching creative writing. Thus the story becomes a powerful vehicle for recollections about the author's own complex life in literature: "I've gone from rags to riches and back again, and more than once. Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light. It's not much different, really, from filming a parade of clouds across the sky and calling it a movie - although it has to be admitted that the clouds can descend, take you up, carry you to all kinds of places, some of them terrible, and you don't get back where you came from for years and years." In dispatching the poor writer from Texas, "Triumph Over the Grave" turns to three recitations of loss, each painfully exacting. And it closes with a startlingly beautiful bedside reunion of two long-divorced lovers. The story, both ingenious and exceedingly well composed, rehabilitates literature for us, exposing its purpose anew, which, it seems to me, is precisely to cast in language the nature of being, and to leave some of this language behind for those who would have a trail of bread crumbs through the darkness. "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden," as a volume, drills down into and through what is tolerable until it hits a powerful vein of the painfully mortal and lasting. If it ends with a yawp of tragicomedy in the Elvis Presley story, "Doppelgänger, Poltergeist," it's only to remind us that Dante, too, was a toiler in the comedic fields, no matter how brutal and austere his triune cosmogony. The problem with a posthumous book is that it's hard to see the work clearly for the tragedy that orbits it. This is especially true when the author is recently deceased, or has died abruptly. The death haunts the text and prevents us from freely roaming it to draw our own conclusions; instead, we see in every exchange the hand of fate. But in "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden," Denis Johnson tries to comfort us about his impending absence, and to use his stunning gift for revelation - truly his singular skill - to brighten the interiors of tragedy and help us wave off the vultures hovering above. It need not, as he says, be so sad: "Life after death, ghosts, Paradise, eternity - of course, we take all that as granted. Otherwise where's the fun?" 'Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light.' RICK MOODY is the author, most recently, of the novel "Hotels of North America." He teaches at Brown University.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review

Ilyasah Shabazz and Watson breathe life into a lightly fictionalized account of the childhood of her mother, Dr. Betty Shabazz. The story spans from 1945 to 1948, bookended by the life-changing experience of seeing lynching firsthand in Georgia, and the beating of Leon Mosley, a black 15-year-old, by a white police officer in Detroit. When the aunt who raised her dies, Betty leaves the segregated South to live with her birth mother in Detroit. Their fractious relationship forms the spine of the book, gaining complexity when Betty finds a more loving home with another family in the neighborhood. Betty finds purpose volunteering with the Housewives' League, encouraging black women to spend their money in black-owned and black-staffed businesses. Short chapters and lucid prose make for an accessible read, with key details bringing the era to life for contemporary young readers. Extensive back matter provides further context for educational use. The lessons from Betty's life are abundant: forgiveness, gratitude for life's blessings, and planting seeds for the future. Her response to hardship and injustice is timeless.--Barnes, Jennifer Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The daughter of Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X, Shabazz (X: A Novel) joins with Watson (Piecing Me Together) to tell this absorbing fictionalized account of her mother's formative years. In a straightforward but engaging narrative voice, Betty describes living with three maternal figures, who offer different strategies for coping with life's difficulties. When Betty sees the victims of a lynching as a child in Georgia, Aunt Fannie Mae tells her, "Baby, some things we just have to take to the Lord." In Detroit, her stern biological mother, Ollie Mae, tries to shield her from knowledge of race riots ("You have enough years ahead of you to know pain, Betty Dean"). After a beating, Betty moves in with Mrs. Malloy, an inspiring leader in the Housewives League. In response to her growing awareness of racism, Betty ponders Malloy's philosophy ("Have faith in the Lord and find the good and praise it") and develops an affinity for community organizing. History comes alive in this illuminating portrayal of the early life of this civil rights activist, which is bolstered by substantial endnotes. Ages 10-14. Agent: Jason Anthony, Massie & McQuilkin. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 3-7-Betty Dean is heartbroken when her beloved Aunt Fannie Mae, who raised her, dies. She is sent north to live with her mother, stepfather, three younger half-sisters, and two younger half-brothers in Detroit. This fascinating first-person fictionalized biography of the future activist and wife of Malcolm X focuses on Betty's years between age 11 and just before high school. Betty is drawn into volunteering for the Housewives League, which supports black-owned businesses and advocates for black people to be hired by a variety of businesses. Through her work for the League, and the support of a family in her church, Betty is able to move beyond her difficult relationship with her mother and find confidence and purpose in her young life. The audio presentation is read by the author, the daughter of Malcom X and Dr. Betty Shabazz. VERDICT While the pacing is somewhat inconsistent and occasionally choppy, the narrator's conviction in the power of the story being told shines through, providing a significant and worthwhile listening experience.-Deanna -Romriell, Salt Lake City Library, UT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review

Long before she was the wife of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz was a girl growing up in 1940s Detroit within a solid churchgoing community engaged in the fight for racial equality; a childless couple from this community raised Betty when her own mother rejected her. Having co-written her mothers (fictionalized) story, Ilyasah Shabazz narrates the audio version, adjusting her voice to mimic youthful delight about candy and jazz music and readjusting it to capture Bettys solemnity when faced with injustice. Bettys busy social life and faithful churchgoing mean that narrator Shabazz must sing Happy Birthday as a child and Amazing Grace in the voice of Paul Robeson, who was a visitor to Bettys community. Shabazz does neither song a disservice. nell beram (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A passion for social justice blossoms during the middle school years for the girl who grew up to become Dr. Betty Shabazz.Loved but unwanted by her mother, 11-year-old Betty finds solace in friends and church. In 1945 Detroit, Betty's African-American church community is a hub for activism in the face of Jim Crow racism, police brutality, and economic inequality. With renowned guests such as Thurgood Marshall and Paul Robeson coming to speak and perform, Betty and her friends are swept up in the fervor and demand for social justice that would become a movement. They volunteer for the Housewives' League, a group that encourages the community to give its dollars to black-owned and -employing businesses. But the movement is also personal for Betty, who struggles to find her place in a world that treats brown-skinned black girls as lesserless beautiful, less worthy, less deserving. Authored by her daughter Ilyasah Shabazz in collaboration with Watson, this moving fictional account of the early life of the late civil rights leader and widow of Malcolm X draws on the recollections of family and friends. The result is a heart-rending imagining of Shabazz's personal challenges as well as a rare, intimate look at the complex roots of the American civil rights movement. A personal, political, and powerful imagining of the early life of the late activist. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.