The memoir that most changed my understanding of what memoir can do is James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, which is neither straightforwardly memoir nor straightforwardly essay but a form Baldwin invented for himself. The titular essay is about his father's death and the 1943 Harlem riot, but it's also about the relationship between personal grief and political anger.

Baldwin understands something about the essay that many essayists don't: the personal experience and the public analysis are not separate. The grief is not a vehicle for the argument. The argument emerges from the grief. They're the same thing examined from different angles.

I give this book to anyone who thinks they know what the political essay is. Baldwin changes the category.