ABSTRACT
The Autobiography of Malcolm X both asks and answers those questions that contemporary educators of African American students skittishly avoid, but inevitably must confront. This project has been driven by African American youth who claim Malcolm X as their cultural hero. Malcolm's academic achievement, his status as one of the best students in the class, had not prepared him for Mr. Ostrowski's reaction to his achievement. Malcolm also wanted to be able to pass on his newly acquired religious and political knowledge to those he knew from the streets. Malcolm was passionate, single-minded, and persistent in his pursuit of literacy. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, in the slave narratives, in the graduation scene in Maya Angelou's work, and in the Black narrative tradition in general. The slave narratives uniformly recount the intensity of the slaves' and ex-slaves' desire for literacy, the barriers they encountered in becoming literate and what they were willing to endure in order to become literate.
