A feminist retelling like no other: the story of Malcom X's Mother The mother of the African American revolutionary, Malcolm X, was a Grenadian woman born at the turn of the 20th century in a rural community in a colonial society where access to education had only just begun for the children of working people and the power of white plantation owners still had few limits. In Ocean Stirrings, Merle Collins has created a moving and deeply feminist novel that not only creates a memorable individual life but also has much to say about the passage from colonialism towards independence.