How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
It was then that I began to change—inside. I drew away from white people. (2.78)
Malcolm makes this statement when he returns to Michigan after visiting Boston for the first time. It's his first major transformation moment, and it happens because he realizes that in some places black people have their own communities where they are not called the N-word. Imagine that.
Quote #2
If I had stayed on in Michigan, I would probably have married one of those Negro girls I knew and liked in Lansing. I might have become one of those state capitol building shoeshine boys, or a Lansing Country Club waiter, or gotten one of the other menial jobs which, in those days, among Lansing Negroes, would have been considered "successful"—or even become a carpenter. (2.90)
For anyone else, any of these lives would have been a pretty good deal. But we guess Malcolm X has some pretty high standards.
Quote #3
Every instinct of the ghetto jungle streets, every hustling fox and criminal wolf instinct in me, which would have scoffed at and rejected anything else, was struck numb. It was as though all of that life merely was back there, without any remaining effect, or influence. (10.106)
This movement comes after Malcolm's brother Reginald tells him about the Nation of Islam. Why do you think Malcolm X accepted his brother’s religion instead of rejecting it? Why was Reginald able to change Malcolm, while Philbert was not?