Alex Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X (Bloom's Guides)

174 Pages·2008·1.44 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom

Bloom’s
GUIDES
Alex Haley’s
The Autobiography of
Malcolm X
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Bloom’s
GUIDES
Alex Haley’s
The Autobiography
of Malcolm X
Edited & with an Introduction
by Harold Bloom
Bloom’s Guides: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Copyright © 2008 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction © 2008 by Harold Bloom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloom, Harold.
Alex Haley’s The autobiography of Malcolm X / Harold Bloom.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s guides)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7910-9832-5 (hardcover)
1. X, Malcolm, 1925–1965. Autobiography of Malcolm X.
2. African American Muslims—Biography. 3. Haley, Alex. I. Title.
II. Title: Autobiography of Malcolm X. III. Series.
BP223.Z8B56 2008
320.54’6092—dc22
[B]
2007051313
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Contents
Introduction 7
Biographical Sketch 9
The Story Behind the Story 12
List of Characters 15
Summary and Analysis 18
Critical Views 59
David P. Demarest, Jr. on Dual Authorship and the 59
Book’s Undogmatic Tone
Paul John Eakin on the Limits of Autobiography 66
H. Porter Abbott on Organic Form 77
John Edgar Wideman on Voice and Authorial 88
Presence in the Book
Clenora Hudson-Weems on Malcolm’s Evolving 93
Attitudes about Women
Carol Tulloch on Fashion and Dress as a Metaphor 103
of Transformation
Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites 112
on the Limits of Revolutionary Rhetoric
Bashir M. El-Beshti on Identity and the 127
Autobiographical Voice
Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo on Male Black 138
Muslim Identity
Robin D.G. Kelley on Malcolm X’s Relationship 150
to the Black Middle Class
Works by Alex Haley and Malcolm X 160
Annotated Bibliography 161
Contributors 164
Acknowledgments 166
Index 168

Introduction
HAROLD BLOOM
Even as I write these brief remarks about this still vital
document, the United States may be setting forth finally to
mend the abyss that Malcolm X proudly represented. Barack
Obama has just won the Iowa primary, and I desperately hope
for his nomination and election. A nation and a world in need
of healing could not do better than Obama. Our presidency
is imperial, as George W. Bush demonstrates daily, and to
place such power in Obama would guarantee a benign reign
ahead of us.
Malcolm X, in the perspective of the twenty-first century,
is a crucial figure in American cultural history. The Nation
of Islam is now mostly within the safe confines of Orthodox
Sunni Islam, which recognizes no distinctions between blacks
and whites. Had Malcolm X not been murdered, we do not
know where he would have turned his spiritual and political
energies. It is very dubious that he would have converted
to Sunni Islam, but nothing about this remarkable man was
predictable.
There are no literary standards that would be relevant to
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but Haley was bearing witness
and was not guided by aesthetic motivations. Richard Wright’s
Black Boy seems to me a work of considerable aesthetic merit,
superior to the novelist’s Native Son. But Malcolm X was
something different, a man working out his own mission in
the conviction that it might help save his people. His fierce
individualism is in an American tradition that goes back to
John Brown, who rightly believed that only violence could
end American slavery. It is a long road from the martyrdoms
of John Brown and Malcolm X to the advent of Barack
Obama, and Haley’s document is an important tracing of part
of that road.


Biographical Sketch
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in
Omaha, Nebraska, to Earl and Louise Little. He was his
father’s seventh child and his mother’s fourth (Earl had three
children from a previous marriage). His father was a Baptist
minister who advocated the philosophy of Marcus Garvey, a
Black Nationalist who urged African Americans to return to
Africa. Threatened by white supremacists, the Little family
moved several times and settled in Lansing, Michigan. In
1931 Malcolm’s father was viciously beaten by a white mob
and run over by a trolley train. His killers were never brought
to justice. Malcolm’s mother struggled to raise the children
on her own, but she suffered a nervous breakdown and was
institutionalized. The children were split up among various
families and orphanages.
Malcolm attended a predominately white school in Lansing
and excelled—he was a smart, popular student. However, when
he told a teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer, he was advised
that, because of his race, this was not a realistic goal. Malcolm
grew disillusioned with the white-dominated environment. He
dropped out of school and moved to Boston, living with his
half-sister Ella. Malcolm became seduced by the city’s nightlife
and began drinking, gambling, and dabbling in drugs.
In late 1941 Malcolm moved to Harlem, in New York
City, joining the underworld of drug dealing, gambling,
prostitution, and armed robbery. He was arrested for and
convicted of burglary in 1946. While in prison, Malcolm’s
siblings introduced him to the Nation of Islam, a Black Muslim
religious sect that preached black separatism and resistance to
white oppression.
Malcolm embraced the religion. He stopped using drugs,
prayed, studied, read voraciously, and entered into debates
spawned by his new ideology. When he was released from
prison in 1952, he became a devoted follower of Elijah
Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm
accepted the basic argument that evil was an inherent