The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Told to Alex Haley over the last two years of Malcolm's life and published months after his assassination, this is the most important political memoir in American history. The arc — from Detroit Red the hustler, to the Nation of Islam minister, to the man who breaks with Elijah Muhammad and goes to Mecca — is the rare American conversion narrative that earns its turn.
Haley's hand shapes every chapter, and he had his own politics; the seams of the collaboration show, especially in the smoothed conversion arc. Detroit Red's criminal exploits grow in the telling, vivid past the point of strict accounting. And because the assassination came before the rethinking settled, the final chapters catch a man still turning and call where he stopped a destination.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
