The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Told to journalist Alex Haley over two years of interviews, this is Malcolm X’s account of his own life: a childhood marked by his father’s death and his mother’s breakdown, years of street hustling and prison, his conversion in prison, his rise as a spokesman, and his break toward a broader vision near the end. Published just after his assassination in 1965, it became one of the defining American autobiographies, read as much for its portrait of transformation as for its politics.