The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

Biography & Memoir

Aug 20, 2018

In the year before his assassination, Malcolm X enlisted journalist Alex Haley, who had interviewed him for Playboy in 1963, to write his autobiography. Haley crafted the book from extensive taped conversations. “A writer is what I want,” Haley quotes Malcolm as saying, “not an interpreter,” and the first-person voice of the narrative is electric, unflinching, unforgettable in its honesty, fraught with the power that made Malcolm X the Nation of Islam’s most effective speaker and organizer for a decade before his acrimonious split with Elijah Muhammad in 1964. On every page, one man’s struggle toward a higher calling is given vivid context by reference to the ordinary and extraordinary attentions of the narrator’s life: the pain of prejudice both passing and violent, the joys of dancing the Lindy, the logistics of a street hustle or a robbery, the liberating vistas of a library (even in prison), the pride inherent in the careful refiguring of Jackie Robinson’s batting average “up through his last turn at bat.” In the reading, The Autobiography of Malcolm X remains riveting—as intense, honest, alert, dangerous, provocative, surprising, and complex as the man whose life it tells.

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Chris Schneider

Apr 5, 2019

One of the best books I've ever read.

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Liz Schlemmer

Nov 23, 2021

This book left a greater impression on me than anything else I read in my twenties -- that one person could live many lives, could influence others to build a movement and could internally change course and his own opinions.

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