Scan barcode
A review by alexblackreads
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs
2.0
I wanted to like this so badly. It's the story of the mothers of three of the primary figures in the civil rights movement and their influence. It sounds fantastic. But it was riddled with problems and I'd have a hard time recommending it.
First, Tubbs doesn't have much information on any of these women. I suppose that's why she combined them all into one very short book instead of writing biographies on all of them. But this kind of led into a myriad of other issues. It's very repetitive. There are a few moments she wrote about multiple times, like when James Baldwin first met his stepfather. She didn't do anything different, it was just a scene she included twice. There was also a lot of speculation and vague commentary on motherhood. Like she just didn't have the information to fill out the book so she started making general assumptions about motherhood, and how so and so's mother's taught him perseverance or the importance of family or whatever. It felt like filler.
It also felt like the focus was on the three men just as much as it was on their mother's. I don't know if she just ran out of information, but she had lengthy sections summarizing their lives as separate from their mother's, which wasn't really what I was into this book for. There was also so much general historical information that was unrelated to the three women. I wish I had an analysis of what percentage of the book was actually about the three mothers because it didn't feel like very much, and it's only 260 pages long to begin with.
I also had a bit of an unfortunate experience with the sections on Louise Little, Malcolm X's mother. I read The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne and Tamara Payne last year which is a fantastic biographic on Malcolm X that delves deep into his childhood and how that shaped him. So I knew literally everything Tubbs wrote in this book about Louise Little, and had a lot more context to boot. (I'm not being full of myself or exaggerating, the biography was a really fantastic work and I'm only two months removed. Les Payne did tons of research and interviews with Malcolm's immediate family.)
Because I already had so much outside knowledge about Louise Little, it wound up feeling like Tubbs was being a little misleading at times. Everything she said was totally factual and lined up exactly with what Les Payne wrote, I just think her interpretation was different than his. My struggle with that was that Payne included a lot more detail and information, while Tubbs only shared the basic facts, so by nature her interpretation came across feeling kind of misleading. For example, Malcolm's father died under slightly mysterious circumstances. Could've been an accident, could've been murder (he angered a lot of white supremacists). Payne has a very lengthy section of his book devoted to discussing this and eventually concludes it was probably an accident. Tubbs explains the basic premise and then concludes it was probably murder. Not saying she's incorrect, but because she left out so much of the discussion and evidence Les Payne included, it rubbed me the wrong way. She also left out a lot of the negative things Malcolm did as a child, which considering that primarily started when he was living with his mother (and included stealing her welfare money), it seemed important to the main premise of the book. Leaving it out entirely felt like an intentional choice.
I also found the writing and structure to be pretty rough. Several times she dropped the main subject and went on lengthy discussions about black motherhood in general, and those sections were my favorite. I kind of wish she'd just written a book specifically on that because that seemed where her passion was.
Honestly, I think if you read in depth biographies of any of these men, you'll get all this information about their mothers'. That's gonna be my plan moving forward. And I highly recommend the Les Payne biography of Malcolm X. I liked what this was trying to do, but it unfortunately failed in the execution for me.
First, Tubbs doesn't have much information on any of these women. I suppose that's why she combined them all into one very short book instead of writing biographies on all of them. But this kind of led into a myriad of other issues. It's very repetitive. There are a few moments she wrote about multiple times, like when James Baldwin first met his stepfather. She didn't do anything different, it was just a scene she included twice. There was also a lot of speculation and vague commentary on motherhood. Like she just didn't have the information to fill out the book so she started making general assumptions about motherhood, and how so and so's mother's taught him perseverance or the importance of family or whatever. It felt like filler.
It also felt like the focus was on the three men just as much as it was on their mother's. I don't know if she just ran out of information, but she had lengthy sections summarizing their lives as separate from their mother's, which wasn't really what I was into this book for. There was also so much general historical information that was unrelated to the three women. I wish I had an analysis of what percentage of the book was actually about the three mothers because it didn't feel like very much, and it's only 260 pages long to begin with.
I also had a bit of an unfortunate experience with the sections on Louise Little, Malcolm X's mother. I read The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne and Tamara Payne last year which is a fantastic biographic on Malcolm X that delves deep into his childhood and how that shaped him. So I knew literally everything Tubbs wrote in this book about Louise Little, and had a lot more context to boot. (I'm not being full of myself or exaggerating, the biography was a really fantastic work and I'm only two months removed. Les Payne did tons of research and interviews with Malcolm's immediate family.)
Because I already had so much outside knowledge about Louise Little, it wound up feeling like Tubbs was being a little misleading at times. Everything she said was totally factual and lined up exactly with what Les Payne wrote, I just think her interpretation was different than his. My struggle with that was that Payne included a lot more detail and information, while Tubbs only shared the basic facts, so by nature her interpretation came across feeling kind of misleading. For example, Malcolm's father died under slightly mysterious circumstances. Could've been an accident, could've been murder (he angered a lot of white supremacists). Payne has a very lengthy section of his book devoted to discussing this and eventually concludes it was probably an accident. Tubbs explains the basic premise and then concludes it was probably murder. Not saying she's incorrect, but because she left out so much of the discussion and evidence Les Payne included, it rubbed me the wrong way. She also left out a lot of the negative things Malcolm did as a child, which considering that primarily started when he was living with his mother (and included stealing her welfare money), it seemed important to the main premise of the book. Leaving it out entirely felt like an intentional choice.
I also found the writing and structure to be pretty rough. Several times she dropped the main subject and went on lengthy discussions about black motherhood in general, and those sections were my favorite. I kind of wish she'd just written a book specifically on that because that seemed where her passion was.
Honestly, I think if you read in depth biographies of any of these men, you'll get all this information about their mothers'. That's gonna be my plan moving forward. And I highly recommend the Les Payne biography of Malcolm X. I liked what this was trying to do, but it unfortunately failed in the execution for me.