fbpx
Wikipedia

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by American minister Malcolm X, who collaborated with American journalist Alex Haley. It was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after his assassination. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965. The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue.[a] He described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm X's life.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
First edition
AuthorMalcolm X with Alex Haley
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreAutobiography
PublishedOctober 29, 1965[1]
PublisherGrove Press
OCLC219493184

While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's literary choices. For example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama". According to Manning Marable, "Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism" and he rewrote material to eliminate it.[2]

When the Autobiography was published, The New York Times reviewer Eliot Fremont-Smith described it as a "brilliant, painful, important book". In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. In 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books.[3] 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.

Summary edit

Published posthumously, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an account of the life of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little (1925–1965), who became a human rights activist. Beginning with his mother's pregnancy, the book describes Malcolm's childhood first in Omaha, Nebraska and then in the area around Lansing and Mason, 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.[4] Little's young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered, as well as his involvement in organized crime. This led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, of which he served six-and-a-half years (1946–1952).[5] The book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (1952–1963) and his emergence as the organization's national spokesman. 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.[6] Malcolm X was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, before the book was finished. His co-author, the journalist Alex Haley, summarizes the last days of Malcolm X's life, and describes in detail their working agreement, including Haley's personal views on his subject, in the Autobiography's epilogue.[7]

Genre edit

The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism.[8] Literary critic Arnold Rampersad and Malcolm X biographer Michael Eric Dyson agree that the narrative of the Autobiography resembles the Augustinian approach to confessional narrative. Augustine's Confessions and The Autobiography of Malcolm X both relate the early hedonistic lives of their subjects, document deep philosophical change for spiritual reasons, and describe later disillusionment with religious groups their subjects had once revered.[9] Haley and autobiographical scholar Albert E. Stone compare the narrative to the Icarus myth.[10] Author Paul John Eakin and writer Alex Gillespie suggest that part of the Autobiography's rhetorical power comes from "the vision of a man whose swiftly unfolding career had outstripped the possibilities of the traditional autobiography he had meant to write",[11] thus destroying "the illusion of the finished and unified personality".[12]

In addition to functioning as a spiritual conversion narrative, The Autobiography of Malcolm X also reflects generic elements from other distinctly American literary forms, from the Puritan conversion narrative of Jonathan Edwards and the secular self-analyses of Benjamin Franklin, to the African American slave narratives.[13] This aesthetic decision on the part of Malcolm X and Haley also has profound implications for the thematic content of the work, as the progressive movement between forms that is evidenced in the text reflects the personal progression of its subject. Considering this, the editors of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature assert that, "Malcolm's Autobiography takes pains to interrogate the very models through which his persona achieves gradual self-understanding...his story's inner logic defines his life as a quest for an authentic mode of being, a quest that demands a constant openness to new ideas requiring fresh kinds of expression."[14]

Construction edit

 
Malcolm X waiting for a press conference to begin on March 26, 1964

Haley coauthored The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and also performed the basic functions of a ghostwriter and biographical amanuensis,[15] writing, compiling, and editing[16] the Autobiography based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and his subject's 1965 assassination.[17] The two first met in 1959, when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Reader's Digest, and again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy in 1962.[18]

In 1963 the Doubleday publishing company asked Haley to write a book about the life of Malcolm X. American writer and literary critic Harold Bloom writes, "When Haley approached Malcolm with the idea, Malcolm gave him a startled look ..."[19] Haley recalls, "It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain."[19] After Malcolm X was granted permission from Elijah Muhammad, he and Haley commenced work on the Autobiography, a process which began as two-and three-hour interview sessions at Haley's studio in Greenwich Village.[19] Bloom writes, "Malcolm was critical of Haley's middle-class status, as well as his Christian beliefs and twenty years of service in the U.S. Military."[19]

When work on the Autobiography began in early 1963, Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm X's tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Haley reminded him that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X, not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam, a comment which angered Malcolm X. Haley eventually shifted the focus of the interviews toward the life of his subject when he asked Malcolm X about his mother:[20]

I said, "Mr. Malcolm, could you tell me something about your mother?" And I will never, ever forget how he stopped almost as if he was suspended like a marionette. And he said, "I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear. They were old and faded and gray." And then he walked some more. And he said, "I remember how she was always bent over the stove, trying to stretch what little we had." And that was the beginning, that night, of his walk. And he walked that floor until just about daybreak.[21]

Though Haley is ostensibly a ghostwriter on the Autobiography, modern scholars tend to treat him as an essential and core collaborator who acted as an invisible figure in the composition of the work.[22] He minimized his own voice, and signed a contract to limit his authorial discretion in favor of producing what looked like verbatim copy.[23] Manning Marable considers the view of Haley as simply a ghostwriter as a deliberate narrative construction of black scholars of the day who wanted to see the book as a singular creation of a dynamic leader and martyr.[24] Marable argues that a critical analysis of the Autobiography, or the full relationship between Malcolm X and Haley, does not support this view; he describes it instead as a collaboration.[25]

Haley's contribution to the work is notable, and several scholars discuss how it should be characterized.[26] In a view shared by Eakin, Stone and Dyson, psychobiographical writer Eugene Victor Wolfenstein writes that Haley performed the duties of a quasi-psychoanalytic Freudian psychiatrist and spiritual confessor.[27][28] Gillespie suggests, and Wolfenstein agrees, that the act of self-narration was itself a transformative process that spurred significant introspection and personal change in the life of its subject.[29]

Haley exercised discretion over content,[30] guided Malcolm X in critical stylistic and rhetorical choices,[31] and compiled the work.[32] In the epilogue to the Autobiography, Haley describes an agreement he made with Malcolm X, who demanded that: "Nothing can be in this book's manuscript that I didn't say and nothing can be left out that I want in it."[33] As such, Haley wrote an addendum to the contract specifically referring to the book as an "as told to" account.[33] In the agreement, Haley gained an "important concession": "I asked for—and he gave—his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review."[33] These comments became the epilogue to the Autobiography, which Haley wrote after the death of his subject.[34]

Narrative presentation edit

In "Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography", writer and professor John Edgar Wideman examines in detail the narrative landscapes found in biography. Wideman suggests that as a writer, Haley was attempting to satisfy "multiple allegiances": to his subject, to his publisher, to his "editor's agenda", and to himself.[35] Haley was an important contributor to the Autobiography's popular appeal, writes Wideman.[36] Wideman expounds upon the "inevitable compromise" of biographers,[35] and argues that in order to allow readers to insert themselves into the broader socio-psychological narrative, neither coauthor's voice is as strong as it could have been.[37] Wideman details some of the specific pitfalls Haley encountered while coauthoring the Autobiography:

You are serving many masters, and inevitably you are compromised. The man speaks and you listen but you do not take notes, the first compromise and perhaps betrayal. You may attempt through various stylistic conventions and devices to reconstitute for the reader your experience of hearing face to face the man's words. The sound of the man's narration may be represented by vocabulary, syntax, imagery, graphic devices of various sorts—quotation marks, punctuation, line breaks, visual patterning of white space and black space, markers that encode print analogs to speech—vernacular interjections, parentheses, ellipses, asterisks, footnotes, italics, dashes ....[35]

In the body of the Autobiography, Wideman writes, Haley's authorial agency is seemingly absent: "Haley does so much with so little fuss ... an approach that appears so rudimentary in fact conceals sophisticated choices, quiet mastery of a medium".[34] Wideman argues that Haley wrote the body of the Autobiography in a manner of Malcolm X's choosing and the epilogue as an extension of the biography itself, his subject having given him carte blanche for the chapter. Haley's voice in the body of the book is a tactic, Wideman writes, producing a text nominally written by Malcolm X but seemingly written by no author.[35] The subsumption of Haley's own voice in the narrative allows the reader to feel as though the voice of Malcolm X is speaking directly and continuously, a stylistic tactic that, in Wideman's view, was a matter of Haley's authorial choice: "Haley grants Malcolm the tyrannical authority of an author, a disembodied speaker whose implied presence blends into the reader's imagining of the tale being told."[38]

In "Two Create One: The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography: Ossie Guffy, Nate Shaw, and Malcolm X", Stone argues that Haley played an "essential role" in "recovering the historical identity" of Malcolm X.[39] Stone also reminds the reader that collaboration is a cooperative endeavor, requiring more than Haley's prose alone can provide, "convincing and coherent" as it may be:[40]

Though a writer's skill and imagination have combined words and voice into a more or less convincing and coherent narrative, the actual writer [Haley] has no large fund of memories to draw upon: the subject's [Malcolm X] memory and imagination are the original sources of the arranged story and have also come into play critically as the text takes final shape. Thus where material comes from, and what has been done to it are separable and of equal significance in collaborations.[41]

In Stone's estimation, supported by Wideman, the source of autobiographical material and the efforts made to shape them into a workable narrative are distinct, and of equal value in a critical assessment of the collaboration that produced the Autobiography.[42] While Haley's skills as writer have significant influence on the narrative's shape, Stone writes, they require a "subject possessed of a powerful memory and imagination" to produce a workable narrative.[40]

Collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley edit

The collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley took on many dimensions; editing, revising and composing the Autobiography was a power struggle between two men with sometimes competing ideas of the final shape for the book. Haley "took pains to show how Malcolm dominated their relationship and tried to control the composition of the book", writes Rampersad.[43] Rampersad also writes that Haley was aware that memory is selective and that autobiographies are "almost by definition projects in fiction", and that it was his responsibility as biographer to select material based on his authorial discretion.[43] The narrative shape crafted by Haley and Malcolm X is the result of a life account "distorted and diminished" by the "process of selection", Rampersad suggests, yet the narrative's shape may in actuality be more revealing than the narrative itself.[44] In the epilogue Haley describes the process used to edit the manuscript, giving specific examples of how Malcolm X controlled the language.[45]

'You can't bless Allah!' he exclaimed, changing 'bless' to 'praise.' ... He scratched red through 'we kids.' 'Kids are goats!' he exclaimed sharply.

Haley, describing work on the manuscript, quoting Malcolm X[45]

While Haley ultimately deferred to Malcolm X's specific choice of words when composing the manuscript,[45] Wideman writes, "the nature of writing biography or autobiography ... means that Haley's promise to Malcolm, his intent to be a 'dispassionate chronicler', is a matter of disguising, not removing, his authorial presence."[35] Haley played an important role in persuading Malcolm X not to re-edit the book as a polemic against Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam at a time when Haley already had most of the material needed to complete the book, and asserted his authorial agency when the Autobiography's "fractured construction",[46] caused by Malcolm X's rift with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, "overturned the design"[47] of the manuscript and created a narrative crisis.[48] In the Autobiography's epilogue, Haley describes the incident:

I sent Malcolm X some rough chapters to read. I was appalled when they were soon returned, red-inked in many places where he had told of his almost father-and-son relationship with Elijah Muhammad. Telephoning Malcolm X, I reminded him of his previous decisions, and I stressed that if those chapters contained such telegraphing to readers of what was to lie ahead, then the book would automatically be robbed of some of its building suspense and drama. Malcolm X said, gruffly, 'Whose book is this?' I told him 'yours, of course,' and that I only made the objection in my position as a writer. But late that night Malcolm X telephoned. 'I'm sorry. You're right. I was upset about something. Forget what I wanted changed, let what you already had stand.' I never again gave him chapters to review unless I was with him. Several times I would covertly watch him frown and wince as he read, but he never again asked for any change in what he had originally said.[45]

 
Haley in the United States Coast Guard, 1939

Haley's warning to avoid "telegraphing to readers" and his advice about "building suspense and drama" demonstrate his efforts to influence the narrative's content and assert his authorial agency while ultimately deferring final discretion to Malcolm X.[45] In the above passage Haley asserts his authorial presence, reminding his subject that as a writer he has concerns about narrative direction and focus, but presenting himself in such a way as to give no doubt that he deferred final approval to his subject.[49] In the words of Eakin, "Because this complex vision of his existence is clearly not that of the early sections of the Autobiography, Alex Haley and Malcolm X were forced to confront the consequences of this discontinuity in perspective for the narrative, already a year old."[50] Malcolm X, after giving the matter some thought, later accepted Haley's suggestion.[51]

While Marable argues that Malcolm X was his own best revisionist, he also points out that Haley's collaborative role in shaping the Autobiography was notable. Haley influenced the narrative's direction and tone while remaining faithful to his subject's syntax and diction. Marable writes that Haley worked "hundreds of sentences into paragraphs", and organized them into "subject areas".[25] Author William L. Andrews writes:

[T]he narrative evolved out of Haley's interviews with Malcolm, but Malcolm had read Haley's typescript, and had made interlineated notes and often stipulated substantive changes, at least in the earlier parts of the text. As the work progressed, however, according to Haley, Malcolm yielded more and more to the authority of his ghostwriter, partly because Haley never let Malcolm read the manuscript unless he was present to defend it, partly because in his last months Malcolm had less and less opportunity to reflect on the text of his life because he was so busy living it, and partly because Malcolm had eventually resigned himself to letting Haley's ideas about effective storytelling take precedence over his own desire to denounce straightaway those whom he had once revered.[52]

 
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X meeting before a press conference after the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was the only time the two men ever met and their meeting lasted only one minute.[53]

Andrews suggests that Haley's role expanded because the book's subject became less available to micro-manage the manuscript, and "Malcolm had eventually resigned himself" to allowing "Haley's ideas about effective storytelling" to shape the narrative.[52]

Marable studied the Autobiography manuscript "raw materials" archived by Haley's biographer, Anne Romaine, and described a critical element of the collaboration, Haley's writing tactic to capture the voice of his subject accurately, a disjoint system of data mining that included notes on scrap paper, in-depth interviews, and long "free style" discussions. Marable writes, "Malcolm also had a habit of scribbling notes to himself as he spoke." Haley would secretly "pocket these sketchy notes" and reassemble them in a sub rosa attempt to integrate Malcolm X's "subconscious reflections" into the "workable narrative".[25] This is an example of Haley asserting authorial agency during the writing of the Autobiography, indicating that their relationship was fraught with minor power struggles. Wideman and Rampersad agree with Marable's description of Haley's book-writing process.[32]

The timing of the collaboration meant that Haley occupied an advantageous position to document the multiple conversion experiences of Malcolm X and his challenge was to form them, however incongruent, into a cohesive workable narrative. Dyson suggests that "profound personal, intellectual, and ideological changes ... led him to order events of his life to support a mythology of metamorphosis and transformation".[54] Marable addresses the confounding factors of the publisher and Haley's authorial influence, passages that support the argument that while Malcolm X may have considered Haley a ghostwriter, he acted in actuality as a coauthor, at times without Malcolm X's direct knowledge or expressed consent:[55]

Although Malcolm X retained final approval of their hybrid text, he was not privy to the actual editorial processes superimposed from Haley's side. The Library of Congress held the answers. This collection includes the papers of Doubleday's then-executive editor, Kenneth McCormick, who had worked closely with Haley for several years as the Autobiography had been constructed. As in the Romaine papers, I found more evidence of Haley's sometimes-weekly private commentary with McCormick about the laborious process of composing the book. They also revealed how several attorneys retained by Doubleday closely monitored and vetted entire sections of the controversial text in 1964, demanding numerous name changes, the reworking and deletion of blocks of paragraphs, and so forth. In late 1963, Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism. He therefore rewrote material to eliminate a number of negative statements about Jews in the book manuscript, with the explicit covert goal of 'getting them past Malcolm X,' without his coauthor's knowledge or consent. Thus, the censorship of Malcolm X had begun well prior to his assassination.[55]

Marable says the resulting text was stylistically and ideologically distinct from what Marable believes Malcolm X would have written without Haley's influence, and it also differs from what may have actually been said in the interviews between Haley and Malcolm X.[55]

Myth-making edit

In Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, Dyson criticizes historians and biographers of the time for re-purposing the Autobiography as a transcendent narrative by a "mythological" Malcolm X without being critical enough of the underlying ideas.[56] Further, because much of the available biographical studies of Malcolm X have been written by white authors, Dyson suggests their ability to "interpret black experience" is suspect.[57] The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Dyson says, reflects both Malcolm X's goal of narrating his life story for public consumption and Haley's political ideologies.[58] Dyson writes, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X ... has been criticized for avoiding or distorting certain facts. Indeed, the autobiography is as much a testament to Haley's ingenuity in shaping the manuscript as it is a record of Malcolm's attempt to tell his story."[54]

 
Malcolm X, March 12, 1964

Rampersad suggests that Haley understood autobiographies as "almost fiction".[43] In "The Color of His Eyes: Bruce Perry's Malcolm and Malcolm's Malcolm", Rampersad criticizes Perry's biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, and makes the general point that the writing of the Autobiography is part of the narrative of blackness in the 20th century and consequently should "not be held utterly beyond inquiry".[59] To Rampersad, the Autobiography is about psychology, ideology, a conversion narrative, and the myth-making process.[60] "Malcolm inscribed in it the terms of his understanding of the form even as the unstable, even treacherous form concealed and distorted particular aspects of his quest. But there is no Malcolm untouched by doubt or fiction. Malcolm's Malcolm is in itself a fabrication; the 'truth' about him is impossible to know."[61] Rampersad suggests that since his 1965 assassination, Malcolm X has "become the desires of his admirers, who have reshaped memory, historical record and the autobiography according to their wishes, which is to say, according to their needs as they perceive them."[62] Further, Rampersad says, many admirers of Malcolm X perceive "accomplished and admirable" figures like Martin Luther King Jr., and W. E. B. Du Bois inadequate to fully express black humanity as it struggles with oppression, "while Malcolm is seen as the apotheosis of black individual greatness ... he is a perfect hero—his wisdom is surpassing, his courage definitive, his sacrifice messianic".[44] Rampersad suggests that devotees have helped shape the myth of Malcolm X.

Author Joe Wood writes:

[T]he autobiography iconizes Malcolm twice, not once. Its second Malcolm—the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz finale—is a mask with no distinct ideology, it is not particularly Islamic, not particularly nationalist, not particularly humanist. Like any well crafted icon or story, the mask is evidence of its subject's humanity, of Malcolm's strong human spirit. But both masks hide as much character as they show. The first mask served a nationalism Malcolm had rejected before the book was finished; the second is mostly empty and available.[63]

To Eakin, a significant portion of the Autobiography involves Haley and Malcolm X shaping the fiction of the completed self.[64] Stone writes that Haley's description of the Autobiography's composition makes clear that this fiction is "especially misleading in the case of Malcolm X"; both Haley and the Autobiography itself are "out of phase" with its subject's "life and identity".[47] Dyson writes, "[Louis] Lomax says that Malcolm became a 'lukewarm integrationist'. [Peter] Goldman suggests that Malcolm was 'improvising', that he embraced and discarded ideological options as he went along. [Albert] Cleage and [Oba] T'Shaka hold that he remained a revolutionary black nationalist. And [James Hal] Cone asserts that he became an internationalist with a humanist bent."[65] Marable writes that Malcolm X was a "committed internationalist" and "black nationalist" at the end of his life, not an "integrationist", noting, "what I find in my own research is greater continuity than discontinuity".[66]

Marable, in "Rediscovering Malcolm's Life: A Historian's Adventures in Living History", critically analyzes the collaboration that produced the Autobiography. Marable argues autobiographical "memoirs" are "inherently biased", representing the subject as he would appear with certain facts privileged, others deliberately omitted. Autobiographical narratives self-censor, reorder event chronology, and alter names. According to Marable, "nearly everyone writing about Malcolm X" has failed to critically and objectively analyze and research the subject properly.[67] Marable suggests that most historians have assumed that the Autobiography is veritable truth, devoid of any ideological influence or stylistic embellishment by Malcolm X or Haley. Further, Marable believes the "most talented revisionist of Malcolm X, was Malcolm X",[68] who actively fashioned and reinvented his public image and verbiage so as to increase favor with diverse groups of people in various situations.[69]

My life in particular never has stayed fixed in one position for very long. You have seen how throughout my life, I have often known unexpected drastic changes.

Malcolm X, from The Autobiography of Malcolm X[70]

Haley writes that during the last months of Malcolm X's life "uncertainty and confusion" about his views were widespread in Harlem, his base of operations.[47] In an interview four days before his death Malcolm X said, "I'm man enough to tell you that I can't put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now, but I'm flexible."[47] Malcolm X had not yet formulated a cohesive Black ideology at the time of his assassination[71] and, Dyson writes, was "experiencing a radical shift" in his core "personal and political understandings".[72]

Legacy and influence edit

Eliot Fremont-Smith, reviewing The Autobiography of Malcolm X for The New York Times in 1965, described it as "extraordinary" and said it is a "brilliant, painful, important book".[73] Two years later, historian John William Ward wrote that the book "will surely become one of the classics in American autobiography".[74] Bayard Rustin argued the book suffered from a lack of critical analysis, which he attributed to Malcolm X's expectation that Haley be a "chronicler, not an interpreter."[75] Newsweek also highlighted the limited insight and criticism in The Autobiography but praised it for power and poignance.[76] However, Truman Nelson in The Nation lauded the epilogue as revelatory and described Haley as a "skillful amanuensis".[77] Variety called it a "mesmerizing page-turner" in 1992,[78] and in 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books.[79]

The Autobiography of Malcolm X has influenced generations of readers.[80] In 1990, Charles Solomon writes in the Los Angeles Times, "Unlike many '60s icons, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with its double message of anger and love, remains an inspiring document."[81] Cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin describes it as "one of the most influential books in late-twentieth-century American culture",[82] and the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature credits Haley with shaping "what has undoubtedly become the most influential twentieth-century African American autobiography".[83]

Considering the literary impact of Malcolm X's Autobiography, we may note the tremendous influence of the book, as well as its subject generally, on the development of the Black Arts Movement. Indeed, it was the day after Malcolm's assassination that the poet and playwright, Amiri Baraka, established the Black Arts Repertory Theater, which would serve to catalyze the aesthetic progression of the movement.[84] Writers and thinkers associated with the Black Arts movement found in the Autobiography an aesthetic embodiment of his profoundly influential qualities, namely, "the vibrancy of his public voice, the clarity of his analyses of oppression's hidden history and inner logic, the fearlessness of his opposition to white supremacy, and the unconstrained ardor of his advocacy for revolution 'by any means necessary.'"[85]

bell hooks writes "When I was a young college student in the early seventies, the book I read which revolutionized my thinking about race and politics was The Autobiography of Malcolm X."[86] David Bradley adds:

She [hooks] is not alone. Ask any middle-aged socially conscious intellectual to list the books that influenced his or her youthful thinking, and he or she will most likely mention The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Some will do more than mention it. Some will say that ... they picked it up—by accident, or maybe by assignment, or because a friend pressed it on them—and that they approached the reading of it without great expectations, but somehow that book ... took hold of them. Got inside them. Altered their vision, their outlook, their insight. Changed their lives.[87]

Max Elbaum concurs, writing that "The Autobiography of Malcolm X was without question the single most widely read and influential book among young people of all racial backgrounds who went to their first demonstration sometime between 1965 and 1968."[88]

At the end of his tenure as the first African-American U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder selected The Autobiography of Malcolm X when asked what book he would recommend to a young person coming to Washington, D.C.[89]

Publication and sales edit

 
The Autobiography of Malcolm X on a bookshelf in the George W. Bush White House[90]

Doubleday had contracted to publish The Autobiography of Malcolm X and paid a $30,000 advance to Malcolm X and Haley in 1963.[55] In March 1965, three weeks after Malcolm X's assassination, Nelson Doubleday Jr., canceled its contract out of fear for the safety of his employees. Grove Press then published the book later that year.[55][91] Since The Autobiography of Malcolm X has sold millions of copies,[92] Marable described Doubleday's choice as the "most disastrous decision in corporate publishing history".[66]

The Autobiography of Malcolm X has sold well since its 1965 publication.[93] According to The New York Times, the paperback edition sold 400,000 copies in 1967 and 800,000 copies the following year.[94] The Autobiography entered its 18th printing by 1970.[95] The New York Times reported that six million copies of the book had been sold by 1977.[92] The book experienced increased readership and returned to the best-seller list in the 1990s, helped in part by the publicity surrounding Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X.[96] Between 1989 and 1992, sales of the book increased by 300%.[97]

Screenplay adaptations edit

In 1968 film producer Marvin Worth hired novelist James Baldwin to write a screenplay based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Baldwin was joined by screenwriter Arnold Perl, who died in 1971 before the screenplay could be finished.[98][99] Baldwin developed his work on the screenplay into the book One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", published in 1972.[100] Other authors who attempted to draft screenplays include playwright David Mamet, novelist David Bradley, author Charles Fuller, and screenwriter Calder Willingham.[99][101] Director Spike Lee revised the Baldwin-Perl script for his 1992 film Malcolm X.[99]

Missing chapters edit

In 1992, attorney Gregory Reed bought the original manuscripts of The Autobiography of Malcolm X for $100,000 at the sale of the Haley Estate.[55] The manuscripts included three "missing chapters", titled "The Negro", "The End of Christianity", and "Twenty Million Black Muslims", that were omitted from the original text.[102][103] In a 1964 letter to his publisher, Haley had described these chapters as, "the most impact [sic] material of the book, some of it rather lava-like".[55] Marable writes that the missing chapters were "dictated and written" during Malcolm X's final months in the Nation of Islam.[55] In them, Marable says, Malcolm X proposed the establishment of a union of African American civic and political organizations. Marable wonders whether this project might have led some within the Nation of Islam and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to try to silence Malcolm X.[104]

In July 2018, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture acquired one of the "missing chapters", "The Negro", at auction for $7,000.[105][106]

Editions edit

The book has been published in more than 45 editions and in many languages, including Arabic, German, French, Indonesian. Important editions include:[107]

  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1965). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1st hardcover ed.). New York: Grove Press. OCLC 219493184.
  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1965). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1st paperback ed.). Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-17122-7.
  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1973). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (paperback ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-002824-9.
  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1977). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (mass market paperback ed.). Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-27139-6.
  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1992). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (audio cassettes ed.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-79366-1.

Notes edit

^ a: In the first edition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Haley's chapter is the epilogue. In some editions, it appears at the beginning of the book.

Citations edit

  1. ^ "Books Today". The New York Times. October 29, 1965. p. 40.
  2. ^ Marable, Manning (2005). "Rediscovering Malcolm's Life: A Historian's Adventures in Living History" (PDF). Souls. 7 (1): 33. doi:10.1080/10999940590910023. S2CID 145278214. (PDF) from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
  3. ^ "Required Reading: Nonfiction Books". Time. June 8, 1998. from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  4. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 4–5.
  5. ^ Carson 1995, p. 99.
  6. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 6–13.
  7. ^ Als, Hilton, "Philosopher or Dog?", in Wood 1992, p. 91; Wideman, John Edgar, "Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography", in Wood 1992, pp. 104–5.
  8. ^ Stone 1982, pp. 250, 262–3; Kelley, Robin D. G., "The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II", in Wood 1992, p. 157.
  9. ^ Rampersad, Arnold, "The Color of His Eyes: Bruce Perry's Malcolm and Malcolm's Malcolm", in Wood 1992, p. 122; Dyson 1996, p. 135.
  10. ^ X & Haley 1965, p. 271; Stone 1982, p. 250.
  11. ^ Eakin, Paul John, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, pp. 152–61.
  12. ^ Gillespie, Alex, "Autobiography and Identity", in Terrill 2010, pp. 34, 37.
  13. ^ Gates, Jr., Henry Louis; Smith, Valerie A. (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. p. 566. ISBN 978-0-393-92370-4.
  14. ^ Gates, Jr., Henry Louis; Smith, Valerie A. (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. p. 566. ISBN 978-0-393-92370-4.
  15. ^ Stone 1982, pp. 24, 233, 247, 262–264.
  16. ^ Gallen 1995, pp. 243–244.
  17. ^ Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 103–110; Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, pp. 119, 127–128.
  18. ^ X & Haley 1965, p. 391.
  19. ^ a b c d Bloom 2008, p. 12
  20. ^ X & Haley 1965, p. 392.
  21. ^ . Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954–1985, American Experience. PBS. Archived from the original on April 23, 2010. Retrieved March 7, 2011.
  22. ^ Leak, Jeffery B., "Malcolm X and black masculinity in process", in Terrill 2010, pp. 52–55; Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 104–110, 119.
  23. ^ Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 103–116.
  24. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, pp. 299–316
  25. ^ a b c Marable & Aidi 2009, pp. 310–311
  26. ^ Terrill, Robert E., "Introduction" in, Terrill 2010, pp. 3–4, Gillespie, "Autobiography and Identity", in Terrill 2010, pp. 26–36; Norman, Brian, "Bringing Malcolm X to Hollywood", in Terrill 2010, pp. 43; Leak, "Malcolm X and black masculinity in process", in Terrill 2010, pp. 52–55
  27. ^ Wolfenstein 1993, pp. 37–39, 285, 289–294, 297, 369.
  28. ^ See also Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, pp. 156–159; Dyson 1996, pp. 52–55; Stone 1982, p. 263.
  29. ^ Gillespie, "Autobiography and identity", in Terrill 2010, pp. 34–37; Wolfenstein 1993, pp. 289–294.
  30. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, pp. 305–312.
  31. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 23, 31.
  32. ^ a b Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 103–105; Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, p. 119.
  33. ^ a b c X & Haley 1965, p. 394.
  34. ^ a b Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, p. 104.
  35. ^ a b c d e Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 103–105.
  36. ^ Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 104–105.
  37. ^ Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 106–111.
  38. ^ Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 103–105, 106–108.
  39. ^ Stone 1982, p. 261.
  40. ^ a b Stone 1982, p. 263.
  41. ^ Stone 1982, p. 262.
  42. ^ Stone 1982, pp. 262–263; Wideman, "Malcolm X", in Wood 1992, pp. 101–116.
  43. ^ a b c Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, p. 119.
  44. ^ a b Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, pp. 118–119.
  45. ^ a b c d e X & Haley 1965, p. 414.
  46. ^ Wood, "Malcolm X and the New Blackness", in Wood 1992, p. 12.
  47. ^ a b c d Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, p. 152
  48. ^ Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, pp. 156–158; Terrill, "Introduction", in Terrill 2010, p. 3;X & Haley 1965, p. 406
  49. ^ Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, pp. 157–158.
  50. ^ Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, p. 157.
  51. ^ Dillard, Angela D., "Malcolm X and African American conservatism", in Terrill 2010, p. 96
  52. ^ a b Andrews, William L., "Editing 'Minority' Texts", in Greetham 1997, p. 45.
  53. ^ Cone 1991, p. 2.
  54. ^ a b Dyson 1996, p. 134.
  55. ^ a b c d e f g h Marable & Aidi 2009, p. 312.
  56. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 3, 23, 29–31, 33–36, 46–50, 152.
  57. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 59–61.
  58. ^ Dyson 1996, p. 31.
  59. ^ West, Cornel, "Malcolm X and Black Rage", in Wood 1992, pp. 48–58; Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, p. 119.
  60. ^ Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, pp. 117–133.
  61. ^ Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, p. 120.
  62. ^ Rampersad, "The Color of His Eyes", in Wood 1992, p. 118.
  63. ^ Wood, Joe, "Malcolm X and the New Blackness", in Wood 1992, p. 13.
  64. ^ Eakin, "Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography", in Andrews 1992, pp. 151–162.
  65. ^ Dyson 1996, p. 65.
  66. ^ a b Goodman, Amy (May 21, 2007). "Manning Marable on 'Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention'". Democracy Now!. from the original on May 17, 2019. Retrieved March 7, 2010.
  67. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, pp. 305–310.
  68. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, p. 306.
  69. ^ Stone 1982, p. 259; Andrews 1992, pp. 151–161.
  70. ^ X & Haley 1965, p. 385.
  71. ^ Gillespie, "Autobiography and identity", in Terrill 2010, p. 34.
  72. ^ Dyson 1996, pp. 21–22, 65–72.
  73. ^ Fremont-Smith, Eliot (November 5, 1965). "An Eloquent Testament". The New York Times. from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2010.(subscription required)
  74. ^ Ward, John William (February 26, 1967). "Nine Expert Witnesses". The New York Times. from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2010.(subscription required)
  75. ^ Rustin, Bayard (November 14, 1965). "Making His Mark". New York Herald Tribune Book Week.
  76. ^ Reprinted in (Book Review Digest 1996, p. 828)
  77. ^ Nelson, Truman (November 8, 1965). "Delinquent's Progress". The Nation., reprinted in (Book Review Digest 1996, p. 828)
  78. ^ McCarthy, Todd (November 10, 1992). "Malcolm X". Variety. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
  79. ^ Gray, Paul (June 8, 1998). . Time. Archived from the original on March 6, 2008. Retrieved February 11, 2011.
  80. ^ "Ebony Bookshelf". Ebony. May 1992. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
  81. ^ Solomon, Charles (February 11, 1990). "Current Paperbacks". Los Angeles Times. from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved June 1, 2010.(subscription required)
  82. ^ Franklin, Howard Bruce, ed. (1998). Prison Writing in 20th-Century America. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 11, 147. ISBN 978-0-14-027305-2.
  83. ^ Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances Smith; Harris, Trudier, eds. (2001). The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-19-513883-2.
  84. ^ "A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Harvard University Press Blog. Harvard University Press. April 20, 2012. from the original on November 24, 2015. Retrieved November 2, 2015.
  85. ^ Gates, Jr., Henry Louis; Smith, Valerie A. (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. p. 557. ISBN 978-0-393-92370-4.
  86. ^ Bradley 1992, p. 34.
  87. ^ Bradley 1992, pp. 34–35. Emphasis and second ellipsis in original.
  88. ^ Elbaum, Max (2002). Revolution in the Air:Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London: Verso. p. 21. ISBN 1-84467-563-7.
  89. ^ Allen, Mike (February 27, 2015). "Eric Holder's Parting Shot: It's Too Hard to Bring Civil Rights Cases". Politico. from the original on June 2, 2015. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  90. ^ Kellogg, Carolyn (February 19, 2010). "White House Library's 'Socialist' Books Were Jackie Kennedy's". Los Angeles Times. from the original on April 28, 2010. Retrieved July 11, 2010.
  91. ^ Remnick, David (April 25, 2011). "This American Life: The Making and Remaking of Malcolm X". The New Yorker. from the original on April 24, 2011. Retrieved April 27, 2011.
  92. ^ a b Pace, Eric (February 2, 1992). "Alex Haley, 70, Author of 'Roots,' Dies". The New York Times. from the original on September 13, 2010. Retrieved June 2, 2010.
  93. ^ Seymour, Gene (November 15, 1992). "What Took So Long?". Newsday. from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved June 2, 2010.(subscription required)
  94. ^ Watkins, Mel (February 16, 1969). "Black Is Marketable". The New York Times. from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2010.(subscription required)
  95. ^ Rickford, Russell J. (2003). Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-4022-0171-4.
  96. ^ Dyson 1996, p. 144
  97. ^ Lord, Lewis; Thornton, Jeannye; Bodipo-Memba, Alejandro (November 15, 1992). . U.S. News & World Report. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved June 2, 2010.
  98. ^ Rule, Sheila (November 15, 1992). "Malcolm X: The Facts, the Fictions, the Film". The New York Times. from the original on July 22, 2023. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
  99. ^ a b c Weintraub, Bernard (November 23, 1992). "A Movie Producer Remembers the Human Side of Malcolm X". The New York Times. from the original on June 30, 2018. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
  100. ^ Field, Douglas (2009). A Historical Guide to James Baldwin. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 52, 242. ISBN 978-0-19-536653-2. Retrieved October 16, 2010.
  101. ^ Ansen, David (August 26, 1991). "The Battle for Malcolm X". Newsweek. from the original on May 20, 2011. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
  102. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, p. 315.
  103. ^ Cunningham, Jennifer H. (May 20, 2010). "Lost chapters from Malcolm X memoirs revealed". The Grio. from the original on April 8, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  104. ^ Marable & Aidi 2009, p. 313.
  105. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (July 26, 2018). "Missing Malcolm X Writings, Long a Mystery, Are Sold". The New York Times. from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 11, 2019.
  106. ^ Park, Madison; Croffie, Kwegyirba (July 27, 2018). "Unpublished Chapter of Malcolm X's Autobiography Acquired by New York Library". CNN. from the original on January 11, 2019. Retrieved January 11, 2019.
  107. ^ "The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley>editions". Goodreads. from the original on January 11, 2012. Retrieved March 7, 2010.

Sources edit

  • Andrews, William, ed. (1992). African-American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays (Paperback ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-019845-7.
  • Bloom, Harold (2008). Bloom's Guides: Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Hardcover ed.). New York: Chelsea House Pub. ISBN 978-0-7910-9832-5.
  • Bradley, David (1992). (PDF). Transition (56): 20–46. doi:10.2307/2935038. JSTOR 2935038. S2CID 156789452. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 13, 2020.
  • Carson, Clayborne (1995). Malcolm X: The FBI File (Mass Market Paperback ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-40009-3.
  • Cone, James H. (1991). Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-0-88344-721-5.
  • Davidson, D.; Samudio, J., eds. (1966). Book Review Digest (61st ed.). New York: H.W. Wilson.
  • Dyson, Michael Eric (1996). Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (Paperback ed.). New York: Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 978-0-19-510285-7.
  • Gallen, David, ed. (1995). Malcolm X: As They Knew Him (Mass Market Paperback ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-40052-9.
  • Greetham, David, ed. (1997). The Margins of the Text (Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism) (Hardcover ed.). Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-10667-7.
  • Marable, Manning; Aidi, Hishaam, eds. (2009). Black Routes to Islam (Hardcover ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-8400-5.
  • Stone, Albert (1982). Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw (Paperback ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1127-6.
  • Terrill, Robert E., ed. (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X (1st Paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51590-0. from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
  • Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor (1993) [1981]. The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (Paperback ed.). London: The Guilford Press. ISBN 978-0-89862-133-4.
  • Wood, Joe, ed. (1992). Malcolm X: In Our Own Image (1st ed.). New York: St Martins Press. ISBN 978-0-312-06609-3.
  • X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex (1965). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1st ed.). New York: Grove Press. OCLC 219493184.

Further reading edit

  • Baldwin, James (1992). One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". New York: Dell. ISBN 978-0-307-27594-3.
  • Cleage, Albert B.; Breitman, George (1968). Myths About Malcolm X: Two Views. Merit. OCLC 615819.
  • Goldman, Peter (1979) [1973]. The Death and Life of Malcolm X (2nd ed.). Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-00774-3.
  • Holte, James (1992). The Conversion Experience in America: A Sourcebook on Religious Conversion Autobiography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-26680-5.
  • Lee, Spike; Wiley, Ralph (1992). By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-8027-8494-0.
  • Lomax, Louis E. (1987) [1968]. To Kill a Black Man: The Shocking Parallel in the Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Los Angeles: Holloway House. ISBN 978-0-87067-982-7.
  • Perry, Bruce (1991). Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill. ISBN 978-0-88268-103-0.
  • T'Shaka, Oba (1983). The Political Legacy of Malcolm X. Richmond, Calif.: Pan Afrikan Publications. ISBN 978-1-878557-01-8.

External links edit

  • Alex Haley's 1963 Playboy Interview of Malcolm X December 28, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  • "American Icons: The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Studio 360. WNYC. August 26, 2011.
  • Bradley, David (April 20, 2012). "A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Harvard University Press.
  • Sissay, Lemn (August 20, 2015). "Malcolm X's autobiography didn't change me, it saved me". The Guardian.

autobiography, malcolm, autobiography, written, american, minister, malcolm, collaborated, with, american, journalist, alex, haley, released, posthumously, october, 1965, nine, months, after, assassination, haley, coauthored, autobiography, based, series, dept. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by American minister Malcolm X who collaborated with American journalist Alex Haley It was released posthumously on October 29 1965 nine months after his assassination Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965 The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X s philosophy of black pride black nationalism and pan Africanism After the leader was killed Haley wrote the book s epilogue a He described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm X s life The Autobiography of Malcolm XFirst editionAuthorMalcolm X with Alex HaleyCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreAutobiographyPublishedOctober 29 1965 1 PublisherGrove PressOCLC219493184 While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book s publication regarded Haley as the book s ghostwriter modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers Haley influenced some of Malcolm X s literary choices For example Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation which Malcolm X had rejected Haley persuaded him to favor a style of suspense and drama According to Manning Marable Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X s anti Semitism and he rewrote material to eliminate it 2 When the Autobiography was published The New York Times reviewer Eliot Fremont Smith described it as a brilliant painful important book In 1967 historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography In 1998 Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of ten required reading nonfiction books 3 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 Contents 1 Summary 2 Genre 3 Construction 3 1 Narrative presentation 3 2 Collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley 3 3 Myth making 4 Legacy and influence 4 1 Publication and sales 4 2 Screenplay adaptations 4 3 Missing chapters 4 4 Editions 5 Notes 6 Citations 7 Sources 8 Further reading 9 External linksSummary editPublished posthumously The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an account of the life of Malcolm X born Malcolm Little 1925 1965 who became a human rights activist Beginning with his mother s pregnancy the book describes Malcolm s childhood first in Omaha Nebraska and then in the area around Lansing and Mason 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 4 Little s young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered as well as his involvement in organized crime This led to his arrest and subsequent eight to ten year prison sentence of which he served six and a half years 1946 1952 5 The book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam 1952 1963 and his emergence as the organization s national spokesman 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 6 Malcolm X was assassinated in New York s Audubon Ballroom in February 1965 before the book was finished His co author the journalist Alex Haley summarizes the last days of Malcolm X s life and describes in detail their working agreement including Haley s personal views on his subject in the Autobiography s epilogue 7 Genre editThe Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X s philosophy of black pride black nationalism and pan Africanism 8 Literary critic Arnold Rampersad and Malcolm X biographer Michael Eric Dyson agree that the narrative of the Autobiography resembles the Augustinian approach to confessional narrative Augustine s Confessions and The Autobiography of Malcolm X both relate the early hedonistic lives of their subjects document deep philosophical change for spiritual reasons and describe later disillusionment with religious groups their subjects had once revered 9 Haley and autobiographical scholar Albert E Stone compare the narrative to the Icarus myth 10 Author Paul John Eakin and writer Alex Gillespie suggest that part of the Autobiography s rhetorical power comes from the vision of a man whose swiftly unfolding career had outstripped the possibilities of the traditional autobiography he had meant to write 11 thus destroying the illusion of the finished and unified personality 12 In addition to functioning as a spiritual conversion narrative The Autobiography of Malcolm X also reflects generic elements from other distinctly American literary forms from the Puritan conversion narrative of Jonathan Edwards and the secular self analyses of Benjamin Franklin to the African American slave narratives 13 This aesthetic decision on the part of Malcolm X and Haley also has profound implications for the thematic content of the work as the progressive movement between forms that is evidenced in the text reflects the personal progression of its subject Considering this the editors of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature assert that Malcolm s Autobiography takes pains to interrogate the very models through which his persona achieves gradual self understanding his story s inner logic defines his life as a quest for an authentic mode of being a quest that demands a constant openness to new ideas requiring fresh kinds of expression 14 Construction edit nbsp Malcolm X waiting for a press conference to begin on March 26 1964 Haley coauthored The Autobiography of Malcolm X and also performed the basic functions of a ghostwriter and biographical amanuensis 15 writing compiling and editing 16 the Autobiography based on more than 50 in depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and his subject s 1965 assassination 17 The two first met in 1959 when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Reader s Digest and again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy in 1962 18 In 1963 the Doubleday publishing company asked Haley to write a book about the life of Malcolm X American writer and literary critic Harold Bloom writes When Haley approached Malcolm with the idea Malcolm gave him a startled look 19 Haley recalls It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain 19 After Malcolm X was granted permission from Elijah Muhammad he and Haley commenced work on the Autobiography a process which began as two and three hour interview sessions at Haley s studio in Greenwich Village 19 Bloom writes Malcolm was critical of Haley s middle class status as well as his Christian beliefs and twenty years of service in the U S Military 19 When work on the Autobiography began in early 1963 Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm X s tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam Haley reminded him that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam a comment which angered Malcolm X Haley eventually shifted the focus of the interviews toward the life of his subject when he asked Malcolm X about his mother 20 I said Mr Malcolm could you tell me something about your mother And I will never ever forget how he stopped almost as if he was suspended like a marionette And he said I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear They were old and faded and gray And then he walked some more And he said I remember how she was always bent over the stove trying to stretch what little we had And that was the beginning that night of his walk And he walked that floor until just about daybreak 21 Though Haley is ostensibly a ghostwriter on the Autobiography modern scholars tend to treat him as an essential and core collaborator who acted as an invisible figure in the composition of the work 22 He minimized his own voice and signed a contract to limit his authorial discretion in favor of producing what looked like verbatim copy 23 Manning Marable considers the view of Haley as simply a ghostwriter as a deliberate narrative construction of black scholars of the day who wanted to see the book as a singular creation of a dynamic leader and martyr 24 Marable argues that a critical analysis of the Autobiography or the full relationship between Malcolm X and Haley does not support this view he describes it instead as a collaboration 25 Haley s contribution to the work is notable and several scholars discuss how it should be characterized 26 In a view shared by Eakin Stone and Dyson psychobiographical writer Eugene Victor Wolfenstein writes that Haley performed the duties of a quasi psychoanalytic Freudian psychiatrist and spiritual confessor 27 28 Gillespie suggests and Wolfenstein agrees that the act of self narration was itself a transformative process that spurred significant introspection and personal change in the life of its subject 29 Haley exercised discretion over content 30 guided Malcolm X in critical stylistic and rhetorical choices 31 and compiled the work 32 In the epilogue to the Autobiography Haley describes an agreement he made with Malcolm X who demanded that Nothing can be in this book s manuscript that I didn t say and nothing can be left out that I want in it 33 As such Haley wrote an addendum to the contract specifically referring to the book as an as told to account 33 In the agreement Haley gained an important concession I asked for and he gave his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review 33 These comments became the epilogue to the Autobiography which Haley wrote after the death of his subject 34 Narrative presentation edit In Malcolm X The Art of Autobiography writer and professor John Edgar Wideman examines in detail the narrative landscapes found in biography Wideman suggests that as a writer Haley was attempting to satisfy multiple allegiances to his subject to his publisher to his editor s agenda and to himself 35 Haley was an important contributor to the Autobiography s popular appeal writes Wideman 36 Wideman expounds upon the inevitable compromise of biographers 35 and argues that in order to allow readers to insert themselves into the broader socio psychological narrative neither coauthor s voice is as strong as it could have been 37 Wideman details some of the specific pitfalls Haley encountered while coauthoring the Autobiography You are serving many masters and inevitably you are compromised The man speaks and you listen but you do not take notes the first compromise and perhaps betrayal You may attempt through various stylistic conventions and devices to reconstitute for the reader your experience of hearing face to face the man s words The sound of the man s narration may be represented by vocabulary syntax imagery graphic devices of various sorts quotation marks punctuation line breaks visual patterning of white space and black space markers that encode print analogs to speech vernacular interjections parentheses ellipses asterisks footnotes italics dashes 35 In the body of the Autobiography Wideman writes Haley s authorial agency is seemingly absent Haley does so much with so little fuss an approach that appears so rudimentary in fact conceals sophisticated choices quiet mastery of a medium 34 Wideman argues that Haley wrote the body of the Autobiography in a manner of Malcolm X s choosing and the epilogue as an extension of the biography itself his subject having given him carte blanche for the chapter Haley s voice in the body of the book is a tactic Wideman writes producing a text nominally written by Malcolm X but seemingly written by no author 35 The subsumption of Haley s own voice in the narrative allows the reader to feel as though the voice of Malcolm X is speaking directly and continuously a stylistic tactic that in Wideman s view was a matter of Haley s authorial choice Haley grants Malcolm the tyrannical authority of an author a disembodied speaker whose implied presence blends into the reader s imagining of the tale being told 38 In Two Create One The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography Ossie Guffy Nate Shaw and Malcolm X Stone argues that Haley played an essential role in recovering the historical identity of Malcolm X 39 Stone also reminds the reader that collaboration is a cooperative endeavor requiring more than Haley s prose alone can provide convincing and coherent as it may be 40 Though a writer s skill and imagination have combined words and voice into a more or less convincing and coherent narrative the actual writer Haley has no large fund of memories to draw upon the subject s Malcolm X memory and imagination are the original sources of the arranged story and have also come into play critically as the text takes final shape Thus where material comes from and what has been done to it are separable and of equal significance in collaborations 41 In Stone s estimation supported by Wideman the source of autobiographical material and the efforts made to shape them into a workable narrative are distinct and of equal value in a critical assessment of the collaboration that produced the Autobiography 42 While Haley s skills as writer have significant influence on the narrative s shape Stone writes they require a subject possessed of a powerful memory and imagination to produce a workable narrative 40 Collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley edit The collaboration between Malcolm X and Haley took on many dimensions editing revising and composing the Autobiography was a power struggle between two men with sometimes competing ideas of the final shape for the book Haley took pains to show how Malcolm dominated their relationship and tried to control the composition of the book writes Rampersad 43 Rampersad also writes that Haley was aware that memory is selective and that autobiographies are almost by definition projects in fiction and that it was his responsibility as biographer to select material based on his authorial discretion 43 The narrative shape crafted by Haley and Malcolm X is the result of a life account distorted and diminished by the process of selection Rampersad suggests yet the narrative s shape may in actuality be more revealing than the narrative itself 44 In the epilogue Haley describes the process used to edit the manuscript giving specific examples of how Malcolm X controlled the language 45 You can t bless Allah he exclaimed changing bless to praise He scratched red through we kids Kids are goats he exclaimed sharply Haley describing work on the manuscript quoting Malcolm X 45 While Haley ultimately deferred to Malcolm X s specific choice of words when composing the manuscript 45 Wideman writes the nature of writing biography or autobiography means that Haley s promise to Malcolm his intent to be a dispassionate chronicler is a matter of disguising not removing his authorial presence 35 Haley played an important role in persuading Malcolm X not to re edit the book as a polemic against Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam at a time when Haley already had most of the material needed to complete the book and asserted his authorial agency when the Autobiography s fractured construction 46 caused by Malcolm X s rift with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam overturned the design 47 of the manuscript and created a narrative crisis 48 In the Autobiography s epilogue Haley describes the incident I sent Malcolm X some rough chapters to read I was appalled when they were soon returned red inked in many places where he had told of his almost father and son relationship with Elijah Muhammad Telephoning Malcolm X I reminded him of his previous decisions and I stressed that if those chapters contained such telegraphing to readers of what was to lie ahead then the book would automatically be robbed of some of its building suspense and drama Malcolm X said gruffly Whose book is this I told him yours of course and that I only made the objection in my position as a writer But late that night Malcolm X telephoned I m sorry You re right I was upset about something Forget what I wanted changed let what you already had stand I never again gave him chapters to review unless I was with him Several times I would covertly watch him frown and wince as he read but he never again asked for any change in what he had originally said 45 nbsp Haley in the United States Coast Guard 1939 Haley s warning to avoid telegraphing to readers and his advice about building suspense and drama demonstrate his efforts to influence the narrative s content and assert his authorial agency while ultimately deferring final discretion to Malcolm X 45 In the above passage Haley asserts his authorial presence reminding his subject that as a writer he has concerns about narrative direction and focus but presenting himself in such a way as to give no doubt that he deferred final approval to his subject 49 In the words of Eakin Because this complex vision of his existence is clearly not that of the early sections of the Autobiography Alex Haley and Malcolm X were forced to confront the consequences of this discontinuity in perspective for the narrative already a year old 50 Malcolm X after giving the matter some thought later accepted Haley s suggestion 51 While Marable argues that Malcolm X was his own best revisionist he also points out that Haley s collaborative role in shaping the Autobiography was notable Haley influenced the narrative s direction and tone while remaining faithful to his subject s syntax and diction Marable writes that Haley worked hundreds of sentences into paragraphs and organized them into subject areas 25 Author William L Andrews writes T he narrative evolved out of Haley s interviews with Malcolm but Malcolm had read Haley s typescript and had made interlineated notes and often stipulated substantive changes at least in the earlier parts of the text As the work progressed however according to Haley Malcolm yielded more and more to the authority of his ghostwriter partly because Haley never let Malcolm read the manuscript unless he was present to defend it partly because in his last months Malcolm had less and less opportunity to reflect on the text of his life because he was so busy living it and partly because Malcolm had eventually resigned himself to letting Haley s ideas about effective storytelling take precedence over his own desire to denounce straightaway those whom he had once revered 52 nbsp Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X meeting before a press conference after the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 This was the only time the two men ever met and their meeting lasted only one minute 53 Andrews suggests that Haley s role expanded because the book s subject became less available to micro manage the manuscript and Malcolm had eventually resigned himself to allowing Haley s ideas about effective storytelling to shape the narrative 52 Marable studied the Autobiography manuscript raw materials archived by Haley s biographer Anne Romaine and described a critical element of the collaboration Haley s writing tactic to capture the voice of his subject accurately a disjoint system of data mining that included notes on scrap paper in depth interviews and long free style discussions Marable writes Malcolm also had a habit of scribbling notes to himself as he spoke Haley would secretly pocket these sketchy notes and reassemble them in a sub rosa attempt to integrate Malcolm X s subconscious reflections into the workable narrative 25 This is an example of Haley asserting authorial agency during the writing of the Autobiography indicating that their relationship was fraught with minor power struggles Wideman and Rampersad agree with Marable s description of Haley s book writing process 32 The timing of the collaboration meant that Haley occupied an advantageous position to document the multiple conversion experiences of Malcolm X and his challenge was to form them however incongruent into a cohesive workable narrative Dyson suggests that profound personal intellectual and ideological changes led him to order events of his life to support a mythology of metamorphosis and transformation 54 Marable addresses the confounding factors of the publisher and Haley s authorial influence passages that support the argument that while Malcolm X may have considered Haley a ghostwriter he acted in actuality as a coauthor at times without Malcolm X s direct knowledge or expressed consent 55 Although Malcolm X retained final approval of their hybrid text he was not privy to the actual editorial processes superimposed from Haley s side The Library of Congress held the answers This collection includes the papers of Doubleday s then executive editor Kenneth McCormick who had worked closely with Haley for several years as the Autobiography had been constructed As in the Romaine papers I found more evidence of Haley s sometimes weekly private commentary with McCormick about the laborious process of composing the book They also revealed how several attorneys retained by Doubleday closely monitored and vetted entire sections of the controversial text in 1964 demanding numerous name changes the reworking and deletion of blocks of paragraphs and so forth In late 1963 Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X s anti Semitism He therefore rewrote material to eliminate a number of negative statements about Jews in the book manuscript with the explicit covert goal of getting them past Malcolm X without his coauthor s knowledge or consent Thus the censorship of Malcolm X had begun well prior to his assassination 55 Marable says the resulting text was stylistically and ideologically distinct from what Marable believes Malcolm X would have written without Haley s influence and it also differs from what may have actually been said in the interviews between Haley and Malcolm X 55 Myth making edit In Making Malcolm The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X Dyson criticizes historians and biographers of the time for re purposing the Autobiography as a transcendent narrative by a mythological Malcolm X without being critical enough of the underlying ideas 56 Further because much of the available biographical studies of Malcolm X have been written by white authors Dyson suggests their ability to interpret black experience is suspect 57 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Dyson says reflects both Malcolm X s goal of narrating his life story for public consumption and Haley s political ideologies 58 Dyson writes The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been criticized for avoiding or distorting certain facts Indeed the autobiography is as much a testament to Haley s ingenuity in shaping the manuscript as it is a record of Malcolm s attempt to tell his story 54 nbsp Malcolm X March 12 1964 Rampersad suggests that Haley understood autobiographies as almost fiction 43 In The Color of His Eyes Bruce Perry s Malcolm and Malcolm s Malcolm Rampersad criticizes Perry s biography Malcolm The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America and makes the general point that the writing of the Autobiography is part of the narrative of blackness in the 20th century and consequently should not be held utterly beyond inquiry 59 To Rampersad the Autobiography is about psychology ideology a conversion narrative and the myth making process 60 Malcolm inscribed in it the terms of his understanding of the form even as the unstable even treacherous form concealed and distorted particular aspects of his quest But there is no Malcolm untouched by doubt or fiction Malcolm s Malcolm is in itself a fabrication the truth about him is impossible to know 61 Rampersad suggests that since his 1965 assassination Malcolm X has become the desires of his admirers who have reshaped memory historical record and the autobiography according to their wishes which is to say according to their needs as they perceive them 62 Further Rampersad says many admirers of Malcolm X perceive accomplished and admirable figures like Martin Luther King Jr and W E B Du Bois inadequate to fully express black humanity as it struggles with oppression while Malcolm is seen as the apotheosis of black individual greatness he is a perfect hero his wisdom is surpassing his courage definitive his sacrifice messianic 44 Rampersad suggests that devotees have helped shape the myth of Malcolm X Author Joe Wood writes T he autobiography iconizes Malcolm twice not once Its second Malcolm the El Hajj Malik El Shabazz finale is a mask with no distinct ideology it is not particularly Islamic not particularly nationalist not particularly humanist Like any well crafted icon or story the mask is evidence of its subject s humanity of Malcolm s strong human spirit But both masks hide as much character as they show The first mask served a nationalism Malcolm had rejected before the book was finished the second is mostly empty and available 63 To Eakin a significant portion of the Autobiography involves Haley and Malcolm X shaping the fiction of the completed self 64 Stone writes that Haley s description of the Autobiography s composition makes clear that this fiction is especially misleading in the case of Malcolm X both Haley and the Autobiography itself are out of phase with its subject s life and identity 47 Dyson writes Louis Lomax says that Malcolm became a lukewarm integrationist Peter Goldman suggests that Malcolm was improvising that he embraced and discarded ideological options as he went along Albert Cleage and Oba T Shaka hold that he remained a revolutionary black nationalist And James Hal Cone asserts that he became an internationalist with a humanist bent 65 Marable writes that Malcolm X was a committed internationalist and black nationalist at the end of his life not an integrationist noting what I find in my own research is greater continuity than discontinuity 66 Marable in Rediscovering Malcolm s Life A Historian s Adventures in Living History critically analyzes the collaboration that produced the Autobiography Marable argues autobiographical memoirs are inherently biased representing the subject as he would appear with certain facts privileged others deliberately omitted Autobiographical narratives self censor reorder event chronology and alter names According to Marable nearly everyone writing about Malcolm X has failed to critically and objectively analyze and research the subject properly 67 Marable suggests that most historians have assumed that the Autobiography is veritable truth devoid of any ideological influence or stylistic embellishment by Malcolm X or Haley Further Marable believes the most talented revisionist of Malcolm X was Malcolm X 68 who actively fashioned and reinvented his public image and verbiage so as to increase favor with diverse groups of people in various situations 69 My life in particular never has stayed fixed in one position for very long You have seen how throughout my life I have often known unexpected drastic changes Malcolm X from The Autobiography of Malcolm X 70 Haley writes that during the last months of Malcolm X s life uncertainty and confusion about his views were widespread in Harlem his base of operations 47 In an interview four days before his death Malcolm X said I m man enough to tell you that I can t put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now but I m flexible 47 Malcolm X had not yet formulated a cohesive Black ideology at the time of his assassination 71 and Dyson writes was experiencing a radical shift in his core personal and political understandings 72 Legacy and influence editEliot Fremont Smith reviewing The Autobiography of Malcolm X for The New York Times in 1965 described it as extraordinary and said it is a brilliant painful important book 73 Two years later historian John William Ward wrote that the book will surely become one of the classics in American autobiography 74 Bayard Rustin argued the book suffered from a lack of critical analysis which he attributed to Malcolm X s expectation that Haley be a chronicler not an interpreter 75 Newsweek also highlighted the limited insight and criticism in The Autobiography but praised it for power and poignance 76 However Truman Nelson in The Nation lauded the epilogue as revelatory and described Haley as a skillful amanuensis 77 Variety called it a mesmerizing page turner in 1992 78 and in 1998 Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of ten required reading nonfiction books 79 The Autobiography of Malcolm X has influenced generations of readers 80 In 1990 Charles Solomon writes in the Los Angeles Times Unlike many 60s icons The Autobiography of Malcolm X with its double message of anger and love remains an inspiring document 81 Cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin describes it as one of the most influential books in late twentieth century American culture 82 and the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature credits Haley with shaping what has undoubtedly become the most influential twentieth century African American autobiography 83 Considering the literary impact of Malcolm X s Autobiography we may note the tremendous influence of the book as well as its subject generally on the development of the Black Arts Movement Indeed it was the day after Malcolm s assassination that the poet and playwright Amiri Baraka established the Black Arts Repertory Theater which would serve to catalyze the aesthetic progression of the movement 84 Writers and thinkers associated with the Black Arts movement found in the Autobiography an aesthetic embodiment of his profoundly influential qualities namely the vibrancy of his public voice the clarity of his analyses of oppression s hidden history and inner logic the fearlessness of his opposition to white supremacy and the unconstrained ardor of his advocacy for revolution by any means necessary 85 bell hooks writes When I was a young college student in the early seventies the book I read which revolutionized my thinking about race and politics was The Autobiography of Malcolm X 86 David Bradley adds She hooks is not alone Ask any middle aged socially conscious intellectual to list the books that influenced his or her youthful thinking and he or she will most likely mention The Autobiography of Malcolm X Some will do more than mention it Some will say that they picked it up by accident or maybe by assignment or because a friend pressed it on them and that they approached the reading of it without great expectations but somehow that book took hold of them Got inside them Altered their vision their outlook their insight Changed their lives 87 Max Elbaum concurs writing that The Autobiography of Malcolm X was without question the single most widely read and influential book among young people of all racial backgrounds who went to their first demonstration sometime between 1965 and 1968 88 At the end of his tenure as the first African American U S Attorney General Eric Holder selected The Autobiography of Malcolm X when asked what book he would recommend to a young person coming to Washington D C 89 Publication and sales edit nbsp The Autobiography of Malcolm X on a bookshelf in the George W Bush White House 90 Doubleday had contracted to publish The Autobiography of Malcolm X and paid a 30 000 advance to Malcolm X and Haley in 1963 55 In March 1965 three weeks after Malcolm X s assassination Nelson Doubleday Jr canceled its contract out of fear for the safety of his employees Grove Press then published the book later that year 55 91 Since The Autobiography of Malcolm X has sold millions of copies 92 Marable described Doubleday s choice as the most disastrous decision in corporate publishing history 66 The Autobiography of Malcolm X has sold well since its 1965 publication 93 According to The New York Times the paperback edition sold 400 000 copies in 1967 and 800 000 copies the following year 94 The Autobiography entered its 18th printing by 1970 95 The New York Times reported that six million copies of the book had been sold by 1977 92 The book experienced increased readership and returned to the best seller list in the 1990s helped in part by the publicity surrounding Spike Lee s 1992 film Malcolm X 96 Between 1989 and 1992 sales of the book increased by 300 97 Screenplay adaptations edit In 1968 film producer Marvin Worth hired novelist James Baldwin to write a screenplay based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X Baldwin was joined by screenwriter Arnold Perl who died in 1971 before the screenplay could be finished 98 99 Baldwin developed his work on the screenplay into the book One Day When I Was Lost A Scenario Based on Alex Haley s The Autobiography of Malcolm X published in 1972 100 Other authors who attempted to draft screenplays include playwright David Mamet novelist David Bradley author Charles Fuller and screenwriter Calder Willingham 99 101 Director Spike Lee revised the Baldwin Perl script for his 1992 film Malcolm X 99 Missing chapters edit In 1992 attorney Gregory Reed bought the original manuscripts of The Autobiography of Malcolm X for 100 000 at the sale of the Haley Estate 55 The manuscripts included three missing chapters titled The Negro The End of Christianity and Twenty Million Black Muslims that were omitted from the original text 102 103 In a 1964 letter to his publisher Haley had described these chapters as the most impact sic material of the book some of it rather lava like 55 Marable writes that the missing chapters were dictated and written during Malcolm X s final months in the Nation of Islam 55 In them Marable says Malcolm X proposed the establishment of a union of African American civic and political organizations Marable wonders whether this project might have led some within the Nation of Islam and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to try to silence Malcolm X 104 In July 2018 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture acquired one of the missing chapters The Negro at auction for 7 000 105 106 Editions edit The book has been published in more than 45 editions and in many languages including Arabic German French Indonesian Important editions include 107 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1st hardcover ed New York Grove Press OCLC 219493184 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1st paperback ed Random House ISBN 978 0 394 17122 7 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1973 The Autobiography of Malcolm X paperback ed Penguin Books ISBN 978 0 14 002824 9 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1977 The Autobiography of Malcolm X mass market paperback ed Ballantine Books ISBN 978 0 345 27139 6 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1992 The Autobiography of Malcolm X audio cassettes ed Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 0 671 79366 1 Notes edit a In the first edition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X Haley s chapter is the epilogue In some editions it appears at the beginning of the book Citations edit Books Today The New York Times October 29 1965 p 40 Marable Manning 2005 Rediscovering Malcolm s Life A Historian s Adventures in Living History PDF Souls 7 1 33 doi 10 1080 10999940590910023 S2CID 145278214 Archived PDF from the original on September 23 2015 Retrieved February 25 2015 Required Reading Nonfiction Books Time June 8 1998 Archived from the original on August 6 2020 Retrieved October 1 2020 Dyson 1996 pp 4 5 Carson 1995 p 99 Dyson 1996 pp 6 13 Als Hilton Philosopher or Dog in Wood 1992 p 91 Wideman John Edgar Malcolm X The Art of Autobiography in Wood 1992 pp 104 5 Stone 1982 pp 250 262 3 Kelley Robin D G The Riddle of the Zoot Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II in Wood 1992 p 157 Rampersad Arnold The Color of His Eyes Bruce Perry s Malcolm and Malcolm s Malcolm in Wood 1992 p 122 Dyson 1996 p 135 X amp Haley 1965 p 271 Stone 1982 p 250 Eakin Paul John Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 pp 152 61 Gillespie Alex Autobiography and Identity in Terrill 2010 pp 34 37 Gates Jr Henry Louis Smith Valerie A 2014 The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Vol 2 New York W W Norton and Co p 566 ISBN 978 0 393 92370 4 Gates Jr Henry Louis Smith Valerie A 2014 The Norton Anthology of African American Literature New York W W Norton and Co p 566 ISBN 978 0 393 92370 4 Stone 1982 pp 24 233 247 262 264 Gallen 1995 pp 243 244 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 103 110 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 pp 119 127 128 X amp Haley 1965 p 391 a b c d Bloom 2008 p 12 X amp Haley 1965 p 392 The Time Has Come 1964 1966 Eyes on the Prize America s Civil Rights Movement 1954 1985 American Experience PBS Archived from the original on April 23 2010 Retrieved March 7 2011 Leak Jeffery B Malcolm X and black masculinity in process in Terrill 2010 pp 52 55 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 104 110 119 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 103 116 Marable amp Aidi 2009 pp 299 316 a b c Marable amp Aidi 2009 pp 310 311 Terrill Robert E Introduction in Terrill 2010 pp 3 4 Gillespie Autobiography and Identity in Terrill 2010 pp 26 36 Norman Brian Bringing Malcolm X to Hollywood in Terrill 2010 pp 43 Leak Malcolm X and black masculinity in process in Terrill 2010 pp 52 55 Wolfenstein 1993 pp 37 39 285 289 294 297 369 See also Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 pp 156 159 Dyson 1996 pp 52 55 Stone 1982 p 263 Gillespie Autobiography and identity in Terrill 2010 pp 34 37 Wolfenstein 1993 pp 289 294 Marable amp Aidi 2009 pp 305 312 Dyson 1996 pp 23 31 a b Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 103 105 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 p 119 a b c X amp Haley 1965 p 394 a b Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 p 104 a b c d e Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 103 105 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 104 105 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 106 111 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 103 105 106 108 Stone 1982 p 261 a b Stone 1982 p 263 Stone 1982 p 262 Stone 1982 pp 262 263 Wideman Malcolm X in Wood 1992 pp 101 116 a b c Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 p 119 a b Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 pp 118 119 a b c d e X amp Haley 1965 p 414 Wood Malcolm X and the New Blackness in Wood 1992 p 12 a b c d Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 p 152 Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 pp 156 158 Terrill Introduction in Terrill 2010 p 3 X amp Haley 1965 p 406 Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 pp 157 158 Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 p 157 Dillard Angela D Malcolm X and African American conservatism in Terrill 2010 p 96 a b Andrews William L Editing Minority Texts in Greetham 1997 p 45 Cone 1991 p 2 a b Dyson 1996 p 134 a b c d e f g h Marable amp Aidi 2009 p 312 Dyson 1996 pp 3 23 29 31 33 36 46 50 152 Dyson 1996 pp 59 61 Dyson 1996 p 31 West Cornel Malcolm X and Black Rage in Wood 1992 pp 48 58 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 p 119 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 pp 117 133 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 p 120 Rampersad The Color of His Eyes in Wood 1992 p 118 Wood Joe Malcolm X and the New Blackness in Wood 1992 p 13 Eakin Malcolm X and the Limits of Autobiography in Andrews 1992 pp 151 162 Dyson 1996 p 65 a b Goodman Amy May 21 2007 Manning Marable on Malcolm X A Life of Reinvention Democracy Now Archived from the original on May 17 2019 Retrieved March 7 2010 Marable amp Aidi 2009 pp 305 310 Marable amp Aidi 2009 p 306 Stone 1982 p 259 Andrews 1992 pp 151 161 X amp Haley 1965 p 385 Gillespie Autobiography and identity in Terrill 2010 p 34 Dyson 1996 pp 21 22 65 72 Fremont Smith Eliot November 5 1965 An Eloquent Testament The New York Times Archived from the original on July 23 2018 Retrieved June 1 2010 subscription required Ward John William February 26 1967 Nine Expert Witnesses The New York Times Archived from the original on July 23 2018 Retrieved June 1 2010 subscription required Rustin Bayard November 14 1965 Making His Mark New York Herald Tribune Book Week Reprinted in Book Review Digest 1996 p 828 Nelson Truman November 8 1965 Delinquent s Progress The Nation reprinted in Book Review Digest 1996 p 828 McCarthy Todd November 10 1992 Malcolm X Variety Retrieved June 1 2010 Gray Paul June 8 1998 Required Reading Nonfiction Books Time Archived from the original on March 6 2008 Retrieved February 11 2011 Ebony Bookshelf Ebony May 1992 Retrieved April 8 2011 Solomon Charles February 11 1990 Current Paperbacks Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on January 11 2012 Retrieved June 1 2010 subscription required Franklin Howard Bruce ed 1998 Prison Writing in 20th Century America New York Penguin Books pp 11 147 ISBN 978 0 14 027305 2 Andrews William L Foster Frances Smith Harris Trudier eds 2001 The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature New York Oxford University Press p 183 ISBN 978 0 19 513883 2 A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X Harvard University Press Blog Harvard University Press April 20 2012 Archived from the original on November 24 2015 Retrieved November 2 2015 Gates Jr Henry Louis Smith Valerie A 2014 The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Vol 2 New York W W Norton and Co p 557 ISBN 978 0 393 92370 4 Bradley 1992 p 34 Bradley 1992 pp 34 35 Emphasis and second ellipsis in original Elbaum Max 2002 Revolution in the Air Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin Mao and Che London Verso p 21 ISBN 1 84467 563 7 Allen Mike February 27 2015 Eric Holder s Parting Shot It s Too Hard to Bring Civil Rights Cases Politico Archived from the original on June 2 2015 Retrieved June 4 2015 Kellogg Carolyn February 19 2010 White House Library s Socialist Books Were Jackie Kennedy s Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on April 28 2010 Retrieved July 11 2010 Remnick David April 25 2011 This American Life The Making and Remaking of Malcolm X The New Yorker Archived from the original on April 24 2011 Retrieved April 27 2011 a b Pace Eric February 2 1992 Alex Haley 70 Author of Roots Dies The New York Times Archived from the original on September 13 2010 Retrieved June 2 2010 Seymour Gene November 15 1992 What Took So Long Newsday Archived from the original on January 11 2012 Retrieved June 2 2010 subscription required Watkins Mel February 16 1969 Black Is Marketable The New York Times Archived from the original on July 23 2018 Retrieved June 1 2010 subscription required Rickford Russell J 2003 Betty Shabazz A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X Naperville Ill Sourcebooks p 335 ISBN 978 1 4022 0171 4 Dyson 1996 p 144 Lord Lewis Thornton Jeannye Bodipo Memba Alejandro November 15 1992 The Legacy of Malcolm X U S News amp World Report Archived from the original on January 14 2012 Retrieved June 2 2010 Rule Sheila November 15 1992 Malcolm X The Facts the Fictions the Film The New York Times Archived from the original on July 22 2023 Retrieved May 31 2010 a b c Weintraub Bernard November 23 1992 A Movie Producer Remembers the Human Side of Malcolm X The New York Times Archived from the original on June 30 2018 Retrieved May 31 2010 Field Douglas 2009 A Historical Guide to James Baldwin New York Oxford University Press pp 52 242 ISBN 978 0 19 536653 2 Retrieved October 16 2010 Ansen David August 26 1991 The Battle for Malcolm X Newsweek Archived from the original on May 20 2011 Retrieved May 31 2010 Marable amp Aidi 2009 p 315 Cunningham Jennifer H May 20 2010 Lost chapters from Malcolm X memoirs revealed The Grio Archived from the original on April 8 2016 Retrieved March 28 2016 Marable amp Aidi 2009 p 313 Schuessler Jennifer July 26 2018 Missing Malcolm X Writings Long a Mystery Are Sold The New York Times Archived from the original on January 11 2019 Retrieved January 11 2019 Park Madison Croffie Kwegyirba July 27 2018 Unpublished Chapter of Malcolm X s Autobiography Acquired by New York Library CNN Archived from the original on January 11 2019 Retrieved January 11 2019 The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told to Alex Haley gt editions Goodreads Archived from the original on January 11 2012 Retrieved March 7 2010 Sources editAndrews William ed 1992 African American Autobiography A Collection of Critical Essays Paperback ed Englewood Cliffs N J Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 019845 7 Bloom Harold 2008 Bloom s Guides Alex Haley s The Autobiography of Malcolm X Hardcover ed New York Chelsea House Pub ISBN 978 0 7910 9832 5 Bradley David 1992 Malcolm s Mythmaking PDF Transition 56 20 46 doi 10 2307 2935038 JSTOR 2935038 S2CID 156789452 Archived from the original PDF on February 13 2020 Carson Clayborne 1995 Malcolm X The FBI File Mass Market Paperback ed New York Ballantine Books ISBN 978 0 345 40009 3 Cone James H 1991 Martin amp Malcolm amp America A Dream or a Nightmare Maryknoll N Y Orbis Books ISBN 978 0 88344 721 5 Davidson D Samudio J eds 1966 Book Review Digest 61st ed New York H W Wilson Dyson Michael Eric 1996 Making Malcolm The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X Paperback ed New York Oxford University Press USA ISBN 978 0 19 510285 7 Gallen David ed 1995 Malcolm X As They Knew Him Mass Market Paperback ed New York Ballantine Books ISBN 978 0 345 40052 9 Greetham David ed 1997 The Margins of the Text Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism Hardcover ed Ann Arbor Mich University of Michigan Press ISBN 978 0 472 10667 7 Marable Manning Aidi Hishaam eds 2009 Black Routes to Islam Hardcover ed New York Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 1 4039 8400 5 Stone Albert 1982 Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw Paperback ed Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 1127 6 Terrill Robert E ed 2010 The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X 1st Paperback ed Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 51590 0 Archived from the original on September 23 2015 Retrieved August 23 2010 Wolfenstein Eugene Victor 1993 1981 The Victims of Democracy Malcolm X and the Black Revolution Paperback ed London The Guilford Press ISBN 978 0 89862 133 4 Wood Joe ed 1992 Malcolm X In Our Own Image 1st ed New York St Martins Press ISBN 978 0 312 06609 3 X Malcolm Haley Alex 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1st ed New York Grove Press OCLC 219493184 Further reading editBaldwin James 1992 One Day When I Was Lost A Scenario Based on Alex Haley s The Autobiography of Malcolm X New York Dell ISBN 978 0 307 27594 3 Cleage Albert B Breitman George 1968 Myths About Malcolm X Two Views Merit OCLC 615819 Goldman Peter 1979 1973 The Death and Life of Malcolm X 2nd ed Urbana Ill University of Illinois Press ISBN 978 0 252 00774 3 Holte James 1992 The Conversion Experience in America A Sourcebook on Religious Conversion Autobiography Westport Conn Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 26680 5 Lee Spike Wiley Ralph 1992 By Any Means Necessary The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X New York Hyperion ISBN 978 0 8027 8494 0 Lomax Louis E 1987 1968 To Kill a Black Man The Shocking Parallel in the Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr Los Angeles Holloway House ISBN 978 0 87067 982 7 Perry Bruce 1991 Malcolm The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America Barrytown N Y Station Hill ISBN 978 0 88268 103 0 T Shaka Oba 1983 The Political Legacy of Malcolm X Richmond Calif Pan Afrikan Publications ISBN 978 1 878557 01 8 External links editMalcolm X at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource Alex Haley s 1963 Playboy Interview of Malcolm X Archived December 28 2017 at the Wayback Machine American Icons The Autobiography of Malcolm X Studio 360 WNYC August 26 2011 Bradley David April 20 2012 A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X Harvard University Press Sissay Lemn August 20 2015 Malcolm X s autobiography didn t change me it saved me The Guardian Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Autobiography of Malcolm X amp oldid 1211698810, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.