Non-Fiction Syllabus Ideas

 For the rest of the semester, I would like to read and discuss:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley: This book is an account of Malcolm X’s life as told to Alex Haley through interviews with Malcolm X. In researching this, I found that there has been controversy over if the book is a fully “accurate” representation of Malcolm X’s life when chapters were omitted from the novel that are to be published soon.  This could create a productive discussion on if an omission of knowledge falsifies a “true” account.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: This book is about the murder of a family and explores the life of the two men who committed the murders. While looking this book up on Wikipedia, I found this interesting, “Despite the book's billing as a factual "True Crime" account, critics have challenged the authenticity of the book, arguing that Capote changed facts to suit his story, added scenes which never occurred, and re-created dialogue”. This could create a good discussion to see whether this knowledge takes away from the truth of the book yet we know that this incident actually happened.