Winner of the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Youth/Teens A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Cowritten by Malcolm X’s daughter this riveting and revealing novel follows the formative years of the man whose words and actions shook the world. Malcolm Little’s parents have always told him that he can achieve anything but from what he can tell that’s a pack of lies—after all his father’s been murdered his mother’s been taken away and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There’s no point in trying he figures and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York he escapes into a world of fancy suits jazz girls and reefer. But Malcolm’s efforts to leave the past behind lead him into increasingly dangerous territory. Deep down he knows that the freedom he’s found is only an illusion—and that he can’t run forever. X follows Malcolm from his childhood to his imprisonment for theft at age twenty when he found the faith that would lead him to forge a new path and command a voice that still resonates today.