Malcolm Little. Detroit Red. Satan. Minister Malcolm X. El-Hadj Malik El-Shabazz. By the names which the eponymous author assumes—and the personae which those names connote—the reader sees how The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) is illustrative of the many ways in which autobiography might delineate (or fabricate) the vicissitudes of life.
This autobiography is also notable for the hyper-constructivism that defines it, as all indications seem to show it was a joint effort between Malcolm and his ghostwriter, Alex Haley. In the text itself, the reader is made privy to a multiplicity of competing voices that attempt to stake out a cohesive narrative of Malcolm as a political figure. In his 2011 biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (a text that often functions as a response to the famous autobiography), the late Manning Marable suggests that Malcolm may have exaggerated aspects of his criminal record within the chapters entitled “Detroit Red,” "Hustler," “Harlemite,” and “Satan.” There are many reasons that we might offer to explain this. As a minister in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm sought to complete an act of da’wa, proselytizing to convert non-believing blacks. Similarly to the Confessions of St. Augustine, Malcolm might have wanted to cast himself as a more dangerous gangster than he was to lend an air of credibility to his life’s story and convince those struggling with the criminal lifestyle to convert. Malcolm makes himself an exemplum, suggesting that if even he, “Satan,” could find his way to the Truth, so might any other common street hustler. However, he does maintain that even in his worst days, he never robbed or burglarized other blacks. One reason that he must make this disclaimer is that having robbed blacks and whites indiscriminately (as he probably did) might have conflicted with the Black Nationalist ideology which drove Malcolm throughout his life.
Competing with Malcolm’s own ideal narrative is the one suggested by his amanuensis, Alex Haley. Haley was a black conservative and may have diligently sought in his writing to inoculate the radical, threatening figure of Malcolm X in the eyes of the white readers of the text. In Haley’s work, we may very well be witness to the greatest creative act of dictation that we will witness this semester, as the trajectory of the narrative seems to evolve from one of torment by and a consequential hatred for whites and the implied threat of violence, to a near beatific and universal vision which Malcolm experiences after his pilgrimage to Mecca.
The iconography of this journey has made an indelible mark on black culture in America, and this has been only further intensified and complicated by Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X. Here we have a subsequent level of interpretation with Lee’s idealistic projection of Malcolm becoming the predominant narrative in American pop culture. One particular case of historical distortion for the sake of ideological projection (pardon the pun) comes in the iconic scene set in Harlem in which Denzel Washington reenacts Malcolm’s incendiary oratory and famous assertion “we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us.” This is a creative rewriting of an offhand comment that Malcolm made in a rather cool and flippant way in a more intimate interview setting. Perhaps this is a mise-en-abyme of the whole narratological and ethical problem of depicting history which concerns us in so far as Malcolm’s (auto)biographer was a mythmaker, exaggerating public perception to create an idea of a person in contrast to attempting to depict a human life as objectively as possible.
In writing a life in hindsight, there is always the desire for cohesion, teleology, and a meta-narrative, aspects usually lacking during the actual living of that life.
In what ways does this narrative seem sincere to you? In what ways is it spiritual? What emotions define Malcolm's narrative of himself and what role does religion play in that narrative? I urge you to consider these questions as we read the second half of the book.
