Wikipedia:Peer review/The Autobiography of Malcolm X/archive1

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like the help of an uninvolved editor to further improve the article in preperation for FAC, Thanks, — GabeMc (talk) 21:59, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article about an important historical figure. I have three main reservations about it. First, I'm not sure the heads, "Malcolm X as author" and "Malcolm X and Haley as collaborators", accurately describe the material in the sections below them. For example, it seems to me that much of the material in "Malcolm X as author" is about the collaboration rather than about Malcolm X as author. This leads to my second reservation, which is that some of the material is repetitious. For example, in the "Malcolm X as author" section, a sentence says, "Dyson articulates the Autobiography's attempt to balance Malcolm X's desired public persona, his conflicting life narrative, and Haley's political and ideological biases." Later, in the "Malcolm X and Haley as collaborators" section, another sentence says, "While Marable argues that Malcolm X was his own best revisionist, he also points out that Haley's collaborative role in shaping the Autobiography was notable." Further on another sentence says, "According to Marable's analysis of manuscript documents, Malcolm X had final say in regards to the content of the Autobiography. However, Haley asserted enough authorial agency in his capacity as collaborator to significantly influence the narrative's direction and tone." My third reservation is that, partly because of the repetition, the article in places reads like an academic paper leading the reader to conclusions rather than simply summarizing the main critical views about the book. Here are some other comments and suggestions:

Summary of material

• "The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an account of the life of petty thief-turned-human rights activist Malcolm X (1925–1965)." - I'd recast this somehow to avoid the long string of adjectives and the odd "thief-turned-human" construction.

• "Haley authored the Autobiography's 74-page epilogue after its subject's murder, in which he summarizes the end of Malcolm X's life, including his February 1965 assassination in New York's Audubon Ballroom." - "Its" is ambiguous since it might seem to refer to someone other than Malcolm X who is mentioned in the "epilogue". Suggestion: "After Malcolm X was assassinated in New York's Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, Haley authored the Autobiography's 74-page epilogue, which summarizes the last days of Malcolm X's life."

• "professor of History and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California" - Should this be "professor of history, American studies, and ethnicity at the University of Southern California"?

Construction

• I'm not sure you need to link "coauthored" or "editing" since these are familiar to most readers of English.

• "the activist's February 1965 assassination" - Delete "February 1965" since the date is already given in the previous section?

• "Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm X's tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam" - Missing word, "and" between "Muhammad" and "the Nation of Islam"?

• "Haley reminded Malcolm X that the book was supposed to be about him, not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam" - "Him" might be misunderstood to mean "Haley". Would this be better: "Haley reminded him that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X, not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam"?

• "and several sources dedicate discussion to how it should be characterized" - Tighten to "and several sources discuss how it should be characterized"?

• "Haley describes an agreement he made with Malcolm X: "Nothing can be in this book's manuscript that I didn't say and nothing can be left out that I want in it." - Until later in the paragraph, it's not entirely clear who the "I" is in this sentence. I think the sentence should be recast to make the meaning unmistakable.

Narrative presentation

• "According to Wideman, Haley was an important contributor to the Autobiography's popular appeal.[39] Wideman expounds upon the "inevitable compromise" of autobiographers" - Should that be "biographers", the broader category? I ask because you mention that Wideman "examines in detail the narrative landscapes found in biography" a couple of sentences earlier.
• "argues that neither Haley's nor Malcolm X's voices are intentionally not as strong as they could be" - One too many negatives? Also, "neither" is singular. Shouldn't this be "neither Haley's nor Malcolm X's voice is as strong as it could be"?

• "in order to allow the reader to insert themselves" - "Reader" is singular. Perhaps "in order to allow readers to insert themselves"?

• "The subsumption of Haley's own voice in the narrative allows the reader to feel as though the voice of Malcolm X was speaking directly and continuously" - "Is speaking directly" rather than "was speaking directly"?

• "In Two Create One: The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography: Ossie Guffy, Nate Shaw, and Malcolm X, autobiographical scholar and author Albert E. Stone argues that Haley played an "essential role" in "recovering the historical identity" of Malcolm X,[44] but also reminds the reader that collaboration is a cooperative endeavor, requiring more than the writer's prose alone can provide, "convincing and coherent" as is may be;" - This may be a bit too complex and might work better as two sentences. The second sentence should end with a colon rather than a semicolon leading into the blockquote.

• "has been done to it are seperable and of equal significance" - "Separable" is misspelled in the blockquote. This is either a re-keying typo that should be fixed, or it needs [sic] after it.

Malcolm X as author

• "makes the general point that the writing of an autobiography itself is part of the myth-making process, part of the narrative of blackness in the 20th century" - Should this be "this autobiography" rather than "an autobiography" since not all autobiographies would have anything to do with blackness in the 20th century?

• To Wood, a significant portion of the Autobiography is Haley and Malcolm X shaping the "fiction of the completed self". - Would "involves Haley and Malcolm X shaping" be better than "is"?

• "(note: the image is a cropped and retouched version of an original)" - I don't think you need this note in the caption. It's already in the image description at the Commons, which should be good enough.

Malcolm X and Haley as collaborators

• "and that it was his responsibility as autobiographer, to select material based on his authorial discretion" - Here again the "his" is ambiguous. The book is not Haley's autobiography, but "autobiographer" seems to mean Haley.

• "In the epilogue he described the process used to edit the manuscript" - In other constructions like this, you use present tense, "describes" instead of past tense to distinguish the eternal present of the published book from the changing tenses of the real lives that preceded the book's publication. I think that "describes" would be correct here and in the next sentence; i.e., "and in it Haley describes the process".

• "The nature of writing biography or autobiography...means that Haley's promise to Malcolm" - I noticed a couple of these ellipses without spaces earlier in the article. WP:ELLIPSIS suggests writing them this way: "The nature of writing biography or autobiography ... means that Haley's promise to Malcolm".

• "You can't bless Allah!" he exclaimed, changing "bless" to "praise", and, "he scratched red through "we kids" "Kids are goats!" he exclaimed sharply. Haley quoting Malcolm X - Some the punctuation here looks strange. Should the whole quotation be inside double quotation marks and the quotes within quotes set off in single quotation marks? Should there be a terminal period after "we kids"?

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 03:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your time and suggestions, I will address your comments later tonight and this week. — GabeMc (talk) 15:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I did the best I could to fix the issues you mentioned above. — GabeMc (talk) 01:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on making the article less repetitive, but it's taking me a little longer than I expected. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:54, 10 November 2010 (UTC)