The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination. James Baldwin and Arnold Perl adapted the book as a film; their screenplay provided the source material for Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X.

About The Autobiography of Malcolm X in brief

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book’s epilogue. The book is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X’s philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. James Baldwin and Arnold Perl adapted the book as a film; their screenplay provided the source material for Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X. The book describes Malcolm’s childhood in Michigan, the death of his father under questionable circumstances, and his mother’s deteriorating mental health that resulted in her commitment to a psychiatric hospital. It documents his disillusionment with and departure from the Nation of Islam in March 1964, his pilgrimage to Mecca, which catalyzed his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islam and his travels in Africa. In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography, and in 1998, Time named it one of ten “required reading” nonfiction books. Author Paul John Eakin and writer Alex Gillespie suggest that part of the Autobiographical’s rhetorical power comes from part of it’s aesthetic implications for the secular self-analyses of Benjamin Franklin, the Puritan narrative, and the African American slave narrative. This has profound implications for Malcolm X and the content of his life as a quest for an authentic mode of being, a quest that demands a constant openness to new kinds of ideas, says author Alex Gillespie.

Haley and autobiographical scholar Albert E. Stone compare the narrative to the Icarus myth, and say it reflects the early hedonistic lives of their subjects, document deep philosophical change for spiritual reasons, and describe later disillusionments with religious groups their subjects had once revered. This led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, of which he served six-and-a-half years. The book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and his emergence as the organization’s national spokesman. It documents Malcolm’s young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered, as well as his involvement in organized crime, which led to him being arrested and sentenced to eight to ten years in prison. In the book, Haley describes in detail their working agreement, including Haley’s personal views on his subject, in the autobiography’s epILogue. Malcolm X is portrayed as a man whose swiftly unfolding career had outstripped the possibilities of the traditional autobiography he had meant to write. He achieves self-understanding through his persona models through his very persona models, which he models through the very pains to interrogate the very models of his inner logic. In addition to functioning as aspiritual conversion narrative, The Autobiographer of MalcolmX also reflects generic elements from other distinctly American literary forms, from Puritan narratives to the secular narrative of the Benjamin Franklin narrative.

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