El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz or Malcolm X: The Construction of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s Religious Identity in Composition Readers

During the revival of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s image in the late 1980s and early 1990s, composition anthologies known as readers began to heavily anthologize sections from The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This article analyzes how Shabazz has been constructed in readers by examining three popular examples—The Conscious Reader, Rereading America, and The Prose Reader. I argue that readers tend to focus on Shabazz’s political image as a civil rights leader while ignoring how his evolving religious viewpoints influenced his political views.