The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an autobiography written by Muslim American minister and activist Malcolm X in collaboration with American journalist Alex Haley. It was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after his assassination. Haley coauthored the book based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965. The Autobiography is a religious conversion narrative which outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of Black pride, Black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After he was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue,^[a] which describes their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm's life.

While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to its publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice in order to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's stylistic choices. For example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation, which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama". According to biographer Manning Marable, "Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm X's anti-Semitism" and rewrote material to eliminate it.

When the Autobiography was published, The New York Times reviewer Eliot Fremont-Smith described it as a "brilliant, painful, important book". In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. In 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books. James Baldwin and Arnold Perl adapted the book as a screenplay, which later provided the source material for Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X.