Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X wrote his famed autobiography in collaboration with African American journalist Alex Haley (most famous for his epic book Roots: The Saga of an American Family). If you are one of the many Americans who believe Malcolm X espoused violence, even hate, I urge you to read this compelling book. It reveals Malcolm X as a much more nuanced thinker and leader than depicted in mainstream media. The Autobiography of Malcolm X resonates with so much other American literature before and after its publication in 1965 after Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21 of that year. Writing his first slave narrative more than a century earlier, Frederick Douglass emphasized literacy as the crucial key to freedom. Malcolm X, too, speaks of the transformation he experienced in prison when he came under the influence of a fellow inmate who inspired him to read voraciously and thereby educate himself. But Douglass also indicates that