Dec 25, 2009

The Autobiography of Malcolm X | Critical Overview

Many reviewers of The Autobiography of Malcolm X agree about the power and desire evident in the book. Truman Nelson, writing in the Nation soon after the release of the book, lauds it for its "dead-level honesty, its passion, its exalted purpose.’’ And, according to Warner Berthoff in New Literary History, the way Malcolm X blends "his own life story with the full collective history of his milieu ... gives Malcolm's testimony its strength and large authority.’’

Malcolm X' s conversion to Islam and how that is relayed in the book is a commonly...