Alan carr autobiography of malcolm x

With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education inthe Civil Rights movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the s. As voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one sounded more urgently, more passionately than the rest.

Malcolm X - once called the most dangerous man in America - challenged the world to listen and learn the truth as he experienced it. And his enduring message is as relevant today as when he first delivered it. Sign up Log in. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room.

Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Sign up for free Log in. It was there that he came into contact with the teachings of a little-known Black Muslim leader renamed Elijah Muhammad. The newly renamed Malcolm X devoted himself body and soul to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the world of Islam, becoming the Nation's foremost spokesman.

When his conscience forced him to break with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity to reach African Americans across the country with an inspiring message of pride, power, and self-determination. The Autobiography of Malcolm X defines American culture and the African American struggle for social and economic equality that has now become a battle for survival.

Malcolm's fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time. The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless.

After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue. While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwritermodern 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.

Inhistorian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. InTime named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books. Published posthumously, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an account of the life of Malcolm Xborn Malcolm Little —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, Michiganthe death of his father under questionable circumstances, and his mother's deteriorating mental health that resulted in her commitment to a psychiatric hospital.

This led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, of which he served six-and-a-half years — It alans carr autobiography of malcolm x his disillusionment with and departure from the Nation of Islam in Marchhis pilgrimage to Meccawhich catalyzed his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islamand his travels in Africa. His co-author, the journalist Alex Haleysummarizes 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.

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. Stone compare the narrative to the Icarus myth. 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.

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 Haley coauthored The Autobiography of Malcolm Xand 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 and his subject's assassination.

Alan carr autobiography of malcolm x: In his autobiography, Malcolm

In 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 When work on the Autobiography began in earlyHaley 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 he said, "I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear. They were old and faded and gray.

Alan carr autobiography of malcolm x: The Autobiography of Malcolm

And he said, "I remember how she was always bent over the stove, trying to stretch what little we had. And he walked that floor until just about daybreak. Though Haley is ostensibly a ghostwriter on the Autobiographymodern scholars tend to treat him as an essential and core collaborator who acted as an invisible figure in the composition of the work.

Haley's contribution to the work is notable, and several scholars discuss how it should be characterized. Haley exercised discretion over content, [ 30 ] guided Malcolm X in critical stylistic and rhetorical choices, [ 31 ] and compiled the work. 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.

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 In the body of the AutobiographyWideman writes, Haley's authorial agency is seemingly absent: "Haley does so much with so little fuss 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.

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. 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.

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.

He scratched red through 'we kids. 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 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.

Alan carr autobiography of malcolm x: This paper proposes to analyze Spike

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? But late that night Malcolm X telephoned.

You're right. I was upset about something. Forget what I wanted changed, let what you already had stand. 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. 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.

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 alan carr autobiography of malcolm x. 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".

Andrews writes:. 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.

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. 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. Wideman and Rampersad agree with Marable's description of Haley's book-writing process. 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 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 indemanding numerous name changes, the reworking and deletion of blocks of paragraphs, and so forth.

In lateHaley 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.

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. In Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm XDyson 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.