Bloom’s GUIDES Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X Currently AvAilAble The Adventures of Huckleberry Lord of the Flies Finn Macbeth All the Pretty Horses Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Animal Farm The Member of the Wedding The Autobiography of Malcolm X The Metamorphosis The Awakening Native Son Beloved 1984 Beowulf The Odyssey Brave New World Oedipus Rex The Canterbury Tales Of Mice and Men The Catcher in the Rye One Hundred Years of Solitude The Chosen Pride and Prejudice The Crucible Ragtime Cry, the Beloved Country The Red Badge of Courage Death of a Salesman Romeo and Juliet Fahrenheit 451 The Scarlet Letter Frankenstein A Separate Peace The Glass Menagerie Slaughterhouse-Five The Grapes of Wrath Snow Falling on Cedars Great Expectations The Stranger The Great Gatsby A Streetcar Named Desire Hamlet The Sun Also Rises The Handmaid’s Tale A Tale of Two Cities The House on Mango Street The Things They Carried I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings To Kill a Mockingbird The Iliad Uncle Tom’s Cabin Invisible Man The Waste Land Jane Eyre Wuthering Heights 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 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Bloom’s Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York, NY 10001 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 Bloom’s Literary Criticism books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Bloom’s Literary Criticism on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Contributing Editor: Amy Sickels Cover design by Takeshi Takahashi Printed in the United States of America Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and Web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the Web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. 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