4/14/2023 0 Comments Heavy memoirThis is a memoir to read and reread, as Laymon recommends readers do with all books of significance. "I knew Clarence Thomas was lying," he writes, "because there was no reason in the world for Anita Hill to lie, and because I'd never met one older man who treated women the way he wanted to be treated." Nothing is free from struggle as he pursues a demanding goal - to become his fully realized self, both as a writer and as a man - freeing himself from the culture of violence that is the soul-strangling outgrowth of racism and misogyny. His mother is a through line he presents their mutual gambling addiction as a folie à deux, and gives a brutally honest portrayal of his efforts to separate from her. Suffering years of what seemingly is anorexia, Laymon ultimately transfers to Oberlin, earns a Ph.D., and becomes a college professor - first at Vassar and then at the University of Mississippi, where he lovingly embraces his roots. Laymon's essays, collected in multiple places - most recently in How to Kill Yourselves and Others Slowly in America - form a powerful indictment of America's negation of human rights. ![]() His debut novel, Long Division, is a strange and wonderful mélange of science fiction and heartbreaking post-Katrina reportage. Laymon's literary output reflects this view. And mostly, it required a commitment to new structures, not reformation." It required an acceptance of our strange. It required loads of unsentimental explorations of black love. writing required something more than just practice, something more than reading, too. was weird, wonderful, slightly wack, and all the way black. "Bambara took what Welty did best and created worlds where no one was sheltered, cloistered, or white, but everyone. The college president lets Laymon's mother know that Kiese "was lucky not to be thrown in jail." Nevertheless, it is at Millsaps that Laymon discovers Toni Cade Bambara. Laymon begins his college education at Millsaps, a predominantly white private college in Jackson, where he deals with toxic racism and is expelled for taking The Red Badge of Courage out of the library without signing it out. His body is a character in this memoir, the body of a black man, objectified by the culture, threatened and threatening because of America's long, ugly history of racial oppression. ![]() Laymon intersperses stories of friends and girlfriends and teachers and books with a narrative about food - both its attraction and revulsion. Laymon writes daily essays that his mother appraises and insists he revise: "'The most important part of writing, and really life, you said, 'is revision.'" You gave me a black southern laboratory to work with words." by words, punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and white space. your insistence I read, reread, write, and revise in those books, made it so I would never be intimidated. We have always been a bent black southern family of laughter, outrageous lies, and books. have never been a family of tuck-ins and bedtime stories any more than we've been a family of consistent bill money, pantries, full refrigerators, washers and dryers. "I remembered forgiving you when Grandmama told me you beat me so much because something in Jackson was beating you," he writes. Grandmama is a font of wisdom and unconditional love. Laymon's grandmother (his mother's mother) is his anchor. ![]() She keeps a running critique of her son's weight. She has a violent relationship with a man whom Kiese loathes and goes out of his way to avoid. To raise him to excellence, she beats him regularly. ![]() and postgraduate work as Laymon was coming up in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Maryland. This fierce woman is a prominent political scientist who completed her Ph.D. In clear, animated prose, Laymon writes in the second person, addressing himself to his mother. Heavy is a compelling record of American violence and family violence, and the wide, rutted embrace of family love. It is about the jagged, uneven road to becoming a writer and a man it is a chronicle of daily confrontations with the twin assaults of American racism and America's weight-obsessed culture. Heavy recounts growing up in a ferociously intellectual household - the only child of a single mother - as a black boy who struggles with weight. I found something noteworthy on almost every page. I have dog-eared too many pages to close my copy of Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Heavy Subtitle An American Memoir Author Kiese Laymon
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