In the preface for Toni Morrison’s book Playing in the Dark, Morrison uncovers a certain ethic or as she calls it an “imagination” in writing that produces works which “invite rereadings”. Her formula requires one to don the hat of a reader and the writer, an imagination that is painfully aware of what it can contain and what it is unable to contain. Once the reader and the writer acknowledge these restrictions and freedoms, the act of understanding or creating that work opens up more possibilities.
Morrison places this responsibility mostly on the reader of such works as she teases out the secondary black characters from white washed literary texts such as Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and points out their significance in the texts despite the writer’s ignorance towards them and their presence in the story. But if one were to glance at the speeches crafted by Malcolm X, Malcolm’s status as a writer and a reader or, to be more specific, as a listener and a speaker is constantly in flux. Malcolm’s imagination as a speaker is accompanied with his imagination as a listener which enables his speeches to have a vitality that has kept them reverberating across history. Much can be said about the tiny nuts and bolts that piece together his speeches. The anaphora, the tone of urgency, the camaraderie, the pauses, the imagery, and the analogies are all parts of the journey that Malcolm experienced along with the listeners of his speeches. His words descending towards the audience invited them or nestled amongst them and made listening a collective activity for example when he said: “Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return – I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich” he speaks of a collective memory that cuts across time and reminds himself and the listeners of the centuries of hard work that has gone unnoticed.
However, there is one aspect in his speeches where his imagination as a speaker or as a writer reigns over the imagination of the reader. And those are the instances where he dares to say something despite it going against the larger narrative. It is where he breaks away from the comfortable and crippling illusion and speaks his truth. In his speech titled “Message to the Grassroots” he even admits “I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because I can prove what I’m saying”. It is also important to note how at times Malcolm X rebelled against his own imagination to put forth the cold hard truths to the people as his wavering support towards Elijah Muhammad or his other ideological changes would denote. All of this shows how powerful and cognizant Malcolm X was in his capacity as a listener and a speaker
Decoloniality and Decolonization 