Summary—Chapter Three: Homeboy
Malcolm arrives in Boston looking like a country person
without any sense of urban fashion. He lives with his half-sister,
Ella, who encourages him to explore the city before tying himself
down to a job. Malcolm quickly sees the difference between the pace
and lifestyle of Boston and that of Lansing. He also sees a difference between
the lifestyle of the middle-class blacks who, like Ella, live in the
neighborhood of Roxbury Hill, and that of ghetto blacks, who have
less money and live further down the hill. Malcolm is drawn to the
latter, objecting to the ways in which the “Hill Negroes” try to imitate
white people and glorify their own menial jobs. When Malcolm finally
begins to look for a job, he begins frequenting a pool hall and
befriends one employee there, Shorty. Shorty, who turns out to be
from Lansing as well, works at the hall racking balls and tending
tables, but he is also an aspiring saxophonist with contacts all
over town. Shorty immediately takes Malcolm under his wing, giving
him pocket money and arranging a job for him.
At the Roseland State Ballroom, where all the big bands
perform, Malcolm replaces the shoeshine boy, who has just won the
local numbers racket, an unofficial lottery played for small amounts
of money. The outgoing shoeshine boy trains Malcolm in the basics
of the job, which include tending the men’s restroom, passing out
towels, selling condoms, and shining shoes. Malcolm soon learns
that much of the job’s income actually comes from selling alcohol
and marijuana, and acting as a go-between for black pimps and white customers.
Malcolm begins to shoot craps, play cards, gamble, drink, smoke,
and use drugs. With his earnings, he buys his first zoot suit, a
flamboyant outfit fashionable on the street. He also gets his first
“conk,” a hairstyle in which one’s hair is chemically straightened
and flattened. At parties, Malcolm overcomes his shyness and develops
a great passion for dancing. He contrasts the unadventurous dancing
done in Michigan with the expressive dancing that goes on at the
Boston parties. Malcolm eventually quits his ballroom job and makes
his first appearance at the Roseland as a customer.
Summary—Chapter Four: Laura
Ella gets Malcolm a job as a clerk at a drugstore in Roxbury
Hill. Malcolm hates the middle-class atmosphere, but one patron
named Laura, a studious high school student, stands out from the
others. Once his friendship with her develops, Malcolm confesses
to Laura his old dream of becoming a lawyer, which she encourages.
Laura is an excellent dancer, but she has a protective grandmother,
whom she must lie to and fight with in order to go out dancing.
The second time Malcolm and Laura go dancing, they compete in a
dance-off at the Roseland, winning over the crowd and even the bandleader,
the legendary Duke Ellington.
Malcolm attracts the attention of a white woman, Sophia,
and dances with her. He takes Laura home and then returns to the
Roseland and eventually leaves with Sophia in her convertible. Malcolm soon
dumps Laura and begins to date Sophia. Sophia has white boyfriends
in addition to Malcolm, but Malcolm keeps her as a status symbol.
By dating an attractive white woman who is not a prostitute, Malcolm
becomes something of a celebrity at nightclubs and bars. When Ella
finds out about Sophia, she disapproves. Malcolm decides to move
in with Shorty. Over the next few years, Malcolm hears about Laura’s
falling out with her grandmother, her introduction to drugs, and
her stint as a prostitute. Looking back, Malcolm blames himself
for ruining Laura’s life.
Analysis—Chapters Three & Four
This section shows how Malcolm’s strong criticism of prejudice within the
black community develops early in his life. Malcolm finds irony
in the quickness of Roxbury Hill blacks to judge each other and
inflate their own status in artificial ways. At a young age, Malcolm
identifies the hypocrisy of his neighbors’ tendency to judge each
other on the basis of age, home ownership, and length of residency
in New England, rather than on the basis of individual actions or
character. Though “Hill Negroes” arguably have a better quality
of life than the many unemployed black residents of Boston, their
unwillingness to acknowledge the menial nature of their jobs while
they look down at poorer blacks makes them just as snobbish as racist
whites. As a bright youth who does not tolerate false pride or self-deception,
Malcolm holds the overly judgmental habits of his middle-class neighbors
in contempt.
Malcolm’s experience shows that the tendency to deceive
oneself is not tied to having money or being of a higher class than
others. The conk hairstyle, popular in middle-class and poor neighborhoods
alike, represents black self-defacement and loss of identity. The
act of conking, which physically forces black hair to resemble white
hair, is representative of the way that black people attempt to imitate
white society. “I know self-hatred first hand,” claims Malcolm after
describing in grim detail the process of straightening his own nappy
hair with a powerful lye solution. Like the drinking and gambling
in the ghetto and the pride and delusion of Roxbury Hill, Malcolm
views the conk as yet another tactic blacks use to distract themselves
from the real problems of their exploitation at the hands of white
society. Malcolm sees blacks, unwilling to accept their true appearance,
doing themselves physical harm in order to make their hair fit a
white ideal of beauty. This need to mesh with white society plagues
blacks of all classes because the cost of not fitting in to white society
is often too great.
Malcolm uses his relationship with Sophia to escape the
racial victimization of his youth by becoming a perpetrator of racism
himself. Though Malcolm strongly criticizes the hypocrisy of his
black neighbors, his relationship with Sophia makes him hypocritical
in much the same way that his neighbors are. Malcolm’s role reversal
is an attempt to steal back the power that is earlier robbed from
him in Michigan, where he is treated more like a pet than a human
being. Although Malcolm has a serious romantic interest in his quiet
black girlfriend, Laura, he leaves her for Sophia, an attractive
white woman for whom he feels no love, in order to look good in
front of his friends and acquaintances around Boston. Disrespecting Sophia’s
humanity is a way for Malcolm to enact revenge for the wrongs that
white people have committed against him. His willingness to sacrifice
his wholesome interest in Laura for his unwholesome abuse of Sophia
represents the immaturity of his early attempts to combat racism.
