Homeboy
- Malcolm has country written all over him when he moves to Boston, but that's okay because Ella is going to take care of him. She tells him to get used to being in Boston before he looks for a job, since he'll probably never have another opportunity to do sightseeing.
- Well, you don't have to tell Malcolm twice. He spends his days wandering around the city. He sees the rich black people in Roxbury, the poorer people in the black ghetto, the historic buildings in Cambridge, and the entertainment downtown.
- Ella wants Malcolm to hang out with the respectable people in the good part of town, but he's not having it. He'd rather hang out with the poor people in the ghetto and learn about playing cards, shooting craps, and swearing.
- Malcolm meets Shorty in the bad part of town when he's looking for a job. Shorty works in the poolroom, but he's really just saving money so that he can learn to play the saxophone and start a band. Shorty and Malcolm get to be friends because they're both from Lansing. Once they hit it off, Shorty promises to get Malcolm a job. And he delivers.
- Ella isn't too happy when she finds out that Malcolm's going to be a shoeshine, but a job's a job. When he shows up for work the next day, the old shoeshine teaches him all the tricks to making money. This is a pretty long and detailed description, but we get the feeling that Malcolm's job will have little to do with how well he can shine shoes.
- Besides the money, the main perk of Malcolm's job is that he gets to know so many famous black artists. Seriously—so many. He almost spends an entire page listing them. Malcolm also gets lots of tips when the black people come to dance. As he gets friendlier with Shorty and his crew, Malcolm gets deeper into drugs, alcohol, crime, and other vices.
- He's also planning to conk (straighten using a chemical treatment) his hair and get a zoot suit. The first part is easy. Shorty convinces Malcolm to buy the zoot suit on credit, and he's so proud that he takes pictures and mails them back home.
- The next part is not so easy. Malcolm has to get together a bunch of supplies in order to straighten his hair. Weird things like eggs, potatoes, lye, and Vaseline. When Charlie puts it on, Malcolm's head feels like it's on fire. The pain is so bad that he trembles.
- Looking back on it, Malcolm realizes how stupid he was to go through all of that just so that he would have hair that looked like a white person's. He spends the next page or so talking about how the conk is a sign a black person who has lost his sense of identity and is self-defacing. He should know: From that moment when Shorty burned his scalp with lye, Malcolm was a true conk devotee.