Book Bearings
The autobiography of Malcolm X
- 462 pages · about 8 hours
- First published 1965
- 70 editions
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1 About this book
The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the life story of the Muslim minister and activist Malcolm X, written with the journalist Alex Haley from interviews held between 1963 and 1965 and published nine months after his assassination. It begins with his childhood in Nebraska and Michigan, the death of his father and the breaking up of his family, and follows him through his years on the streets, his time in prison, his conversion and his rise as a minister of the Nation of Islam, and the changes in his thinking near the close of his life. Haley's epilogue describes how the two worked together and the last period of Malcolm's life.
- Biography
- African americans, biography
- Political activists
- African Continental Ancestry Group
- Racism
- History
- Anti-racism
- Afro-Americans
2 What to expect
The life story of Malcolm X as he told it to Alex Haley: a Michigan childhood, street crime, prison, conversion to the Nation of Islam and fame as its fiercest speaker, and then a further change of mind. It is a conversion narrative and an indictment of American racism, told in a direct, forceful first-person voice. It is long and absorbing, and scholars continue to discuss how much Haley shaped it.
Good for readers who want: a classic American autobiography, the civil rights era, and a story of self-transformation.
3 About Alex Haley
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Alex Haley
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