The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

How hard is The Autobiography of Malcolm X to read?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X scores 32 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 28 out of 100

The prose is plain and conversational, with the occasional rhetorical flourish. The difficulty comes from period slang (conk, gage, slave, hip) and the many jazz names, but context explains them. It is simpler than The Great Gatsby and closer to The Diary of a Young Girl in directness.

Sentence structure: 30 out of 100

Malcolm writes in short, direct, spoken sentences with occasional long lists, such as the lye-and-potato recipe or the roll call of Harlem clubs. The sentences are clear and rhythmic, much like 1984 in directness.

Abstraction: 35 out of 100

Nearly everything is concrete: a burned house, a rabbit with its head twisted off, a conk, a numbers slip. Malcolm moves from scenes to general claims about race, but the claims grow out of lived events. It sits near Atomic Habits and It Ends with Us in groundedness.

Information density: 42 out of 100

The text delivers a lot of names, places and street economics, from the numbers racket odds to Harlem's immigrant history and the long list of musicians. Still, the pace is narrative and easy to follow, closer to Beach Read than Moby-Dick.

How The Autobiography of Malcolm X is regarded

The Autobiography of Malcolm X holds a literary regard score of 89 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where the story of The Autobiography of Malcolm X takes place

• United States, 1925-1964 (1925 to 1964), the main setting

About the author

Malcolm X, Alex Haley