The Autobiographies of BTW and Malcolm X
In this blog, I will discuss the differing tone and audience between Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery and Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X . Both autobiographies showcase the stories of important Black leaders and also use personal experience to make a larger argument about race in America. However, I noticed that they spoke to the reader in pretty different ways. Washington wrote with a calmer, more careful tone, and it sounded like he was arguing towards multiple groups of people at the same time, like the white majority as well as the Black community. In comparison, Malcolm X wrote in a more confrontational way, and in some moments he seemed to completely disregard the idea of comforting white readers. In my opinion, that difference shows what each author thinks is possible for Black progress in his own time. Booker T. Washington forms a pretty optimistic tone in Up from Slavery in comparison to what you might expect. Even when he discusses slavery, he doesn’t usu...