Marble, Manning. Malcolm X; A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011. Print.

When I began my search I already knew I wanted to research Malcolm X. I had already known he was a crucial figure in the Civil Rights Movement but after our reading for Friday’s class I realized there was a lot more to him. I hadn’t realized that he had converted from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam and I was curious to find out more about his teachings during his second conversion. I simply put in the search term Malcolm X into the library catalog and had multiple books to pick from. I picked a book titled Malcolm X; A Life of Reinvention. I chose this book because it is in biography format that focuses on his life and continual reinvention and goes through the many stages of his life.

When I actually got to the book and began looking through I saw that each chapter was broken up by significant periods of time in his life. Starting when he was put in jail to his conversion to the Nation of Islam to his revelation on Hajj, al significant parts of his life. Some chapters covered a span of five or so years while others covered just a few weeks. I was intrigued by how they broke up Malcolms X’s life into various parts. I also think that the idea of each chapter being a different version of Malcolm X and that the book having and overall theme of reinvention will lead to an interesting perspective on Malcolm X. The book also claims to have government reports on him and friends and family reports that have “never been seen before” so that should be interesting. At this point in time I plan on writing my essay on Malcolm X so this book should be incredibly useful for that.

When I went to get my book it was surrounded by other books that were also about Malcolm X. One book that caught my eye was called “The Iconography of Malcolm X”. I thought this might be interesting because it doesn’t focus so much on Malcolm X’s life but rather on his impact on the Civil Rights Movement and Islam and his legacy as an icon. I also saw that above the books on Malcolm X were books on Islam. I was surprised there weren’t books on MLK or more civil rights books but rather books titled, “The War on Islam,” and “Islam in the Modern Century,” filled the shelves. I get the sense that these books are not so much about the practices of Islam but more about their spreading and the perception of Islam in different countries. Especially perhaps, the rather negative view of Islam in America.

I was very interested in the idea of Zen Buddhism since we hadn’t gone over it in great detail in class and because it is one of the more “well known” sects of Buddhism, at least everyone thinks they know what Zen is. I began my search by using the Lafayette library catalogue, where I searched the term “Zen Buddhism” and came up with a lot of hits. I probably could have narrowed this search down but decided to scroll through the first few pages of results. Immediately a title, “Like Cats and Dogs” by Steven Heine, stood out to me, I had no idea how this could relate to Zen Buddhism so I set out to find the book.

When end inspecting the book it turned out it was about the ko’an and the question “do dogs have Buddha souls” and the answer being “mu”. It focuses on the significance of the “mu”, deconstructing the “mu”, the textual and historical “mu”, other versions of the ko’an, and how the “mu” helps one achieve nirvana. I found it interesting that there was a whole book dedicated to this one question. And since we didn’t really talk about it in class, but it definitely was interesting and strange and something that might help me with my essay on Zen Buddhism. Perhaps I can explore the different ways the Zen Master helps his/her students move towards enlightenment through the use of this question.

On the shelf next to “Like Cats and Dogs” were other books some titled along the lines of “The Practices of Zen Buddhism” or “The Daily Life of a Zen Buddhist”. While these texts may not be as interesting as “Like Cats and Dogs”, they may be more helpful to gain a more basic understanding of Zen Buddhism for my essay.

Heine, Steven. “Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Koan in Zen Buddhism”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print.