The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Payne frequently cites Malcolm’s book, co-authored with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. One of the reasons he wanted to write The Dead Are Arising was to fill in some of the gaps between the version Malcolm presented of this life and the truth. No autobiography can be comprehensive or completely objective. Description of one’s self is biased by definition.

Malcolm both overplayed and underplayed parts of his personality and the origin story of becoming Malcolm X. For instance, of his clumsiness with written language before converting to Islam, Malcolm said he “didn’t know a verb from a house” (153). Payne shows that, in fact, “the prose of his early 1940s letters was sharp and clear” (153). When Payne interviews Jarvis, and others who knew Malcolm during his street days, he finds that they “dismiss as hyperbole Malcolm’s claims in the Autobiography that he became a depraved monster of a dope fiend” (194). The Autobiography—itself an incredibly influential book—represents the need for committed biographers to approach subjects from different perspectives.