Part autobiography, part reportage, part cultural criticism, a fierce and memorable new book by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer.

The letter was written in his strong hand and to quote it from memory is to blush with all the possibility his letter contained, and how much do I miss all that possibility. So, I won't quote it verbatim. Because if I did, I’d have to stop and put my pen down and let hope dry up the page—hope that this will matter to you, and to others who know nothing of this science fiction, of first a letter filled with hope and then a decade later no more letters except this present day letter to the living who want to hear our AIDS dead, the better to understand what that was, and maybe run with it into a more loving future.

Hilton Als brings his “fire and elegance” (New York) to write about his life among others—family, friends, people loved and lost. I Don’t Remember traces his coming of age, from his mother’s Crown Heights house filled with sisters, to the thrilling new world of Columbia University, where other young men also found joy in poetry, film, and art. He tours the myriad cultural influences from 1980s New York that helped form the extraordinary artist we know today. “Foul with experience” and “burning with want,” Als attempts to leave the shyness of his youth behind and claim the truth “for once, and at last.” Even as he acknowledges the impossibility in its telling, he forges ahead, laying bare the complexities of love, joy, pain, and yearning that have animated his life. I Don’t Remember stands tall as a work of personal confession and cultural portraiture. But above all, it is an ode and an address to lovers who saw and touched Als’s soul, held there still.