What are the advantages (both personal and political) of autobiography as a literary form?

A good autobiography, like this one, is both expressive and eloquent. Richard Wright combines an amazing mixture of simplicity and majesty. This wasn’t gained through formal education, of which he had little, but rather through his voracious reading of many of the literary masters, and his own intrinsic skill. His use of rich and vivid language to describe brutal, dehumanizing events provides an interesting and often chilling contrast to the violence in the book. Language has deep meaning in this novel, because it is through language that Richard finds his freedom.