Read Heavy An American Memoir Kiese Laymon 9781501125669 Books

Product details Paperback 256 pages Publisher Scribner; Reprint edition (March 5, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1501125664

Heavy An American Memoir Kiese Laymon 9781501125669 Books Reviews

• Finished Heavy moments ago. I heard Kiese Laymon on NPR, and the second I heard he was from Mississippi, I pulled over and ordered, not only Heavy, but all of his books. I am so glad I was listening to NPR last week because I NEEDED this book in my life. As a Mississippian who left after college but whose family (including mom) still treads water in the state, this book gave voice to the pain, the struggles, the cycles of violence and desperation and waning hopelessness that influence just about every decision made by people in Mississippi. Many times I have been asked to describe the psychology of Mississippi and its people, but I could never explain it. Mr. Laymon captures that psychology and he paints literary pictures that are so real and so emotional that many times I had to take a break and remind myself to breathe because this book takes your breath away.
  The way in which he wrote this book to his mother, and started from his early childhood forward, created a crescendo of emotions. My heart rate increased as I moved along his life, and I kept thinking, "Oh no, something terrible will happen." Only to get to the end and realize the "something terrible" was the metamorphosis of the relationships between the characters -- Laymon and his mom, Laymon and his grandmother, Laymon and his body, which ingenuously is a prominent character of his memoir. There are so many layers to this memoir, and rarely do I read a book in two days only to sit down to read it again. Not only am I going to re-read this book, but I am going to have my husband, son and daughter read this book as they often ask about Mississippi and its influence on me as a woman, mom, etc.
  Poignant, personal, heavy. Deals with issues that are not fun but that are too common in so many of our lives and Laymon recounts these serious events and experiences honestly and yet respectfully (positive there is a better way to describe it). Who would I recommend read this book? Moms, sons, daughters and dads, people who deal with body issues, broken people, hurt people, the people who love broken and hurt people, anyone who wants more insight into the sustaining impact of racism, oppression, and America's unwillingness to confront the past in truth and frankness. Outstanding book.
• Heavy it is in more ways than one. Kiese Laymon’s intense memoir HEAVY AN AMERICAN MEMOIR. What the author started writing as a child sitting on his grammama’s front porch in Mississippi as a young boy, he finishes as an educated young man, sharing his deepest, darkest secrets, which he withheld from those he loved, unleashing them finally, with the hopes of not only becoming the writer he was meant to be, but to stop living lies that went back and forth between him and his mom.
  
  In the book, Kiese shares what it was like to grow up in a body he never felt comfortable in, going to school in the deep South, where racial inequality was still more than prevalent, it was a way of life that he had to survive on a daily basis, and where his mother loved him something fierce but her struggle also meant that her anger was not contained.
  
  Kiese writes with such depth, with such poetry, and there is a beautiful bond with his friends that will lift you right up. I love, love, love his way with words. Don’t read this book quickly as you are apt to miss something. And, savor everything that his grandmother has to say. She is as wise as they come.
• Heavy An American Memoir, by Kiese. Laymon (Scribner, 2018) is a complexly layered book. On its face it is the memories of a man who began his life as a poor child in Mississippi and how his experiences accumulated to make him the man, the author and the professor he is today. It is a journey in search of authentic love, authentic connections, authentic grasp of self in spite of the cultural and historic forces that would deprive him of all three.
  
  It is a brutal story. It is a tender story.
  
  A memoir is by definition a recounting of events the author lived through. It is told from the perspective of the author. In all human stories there are other people involved, other points of view, other memories of the same events seen through other eyes. Precisely because it is a memoir, a telling of the author’s experience, it must be taken seriously. In Laymon’s case I think it especially important to listen carefully and respect his voice, for it is the voice of one man who is part of a subset of Americans who are seldom taken seriously, seldom listened to carefully, seldom taken into account in the national conversation. Voices like Kiese Laymon are often dismissed, belittled, ignored.
  
  Some readers will be appalled at some of the experiences Laymon recounts. Others may dismiss events as exaggerated or from the past, things that wold not take place today. Others will read some parts of the book and walk away smug in their belief that Blacks are the architects of fractured Black families; there is nothing here that remotely supports such a reading of life in America—Black or white.
  
  Throughout the book Laymon is speaking to his mother, telling her his becoming. His experience is that none of the significant people in his life tell the truth about things that matter most deeply. (I intentionally am not providing any examples from the book I don’t know how to give examples here without taking away from the power of Laymon’s voice. I encourage—nay, urge—you to engage him unfiltered through a reviewer.) He openly struggles with understanding and telling the truth. His struggle is one with which anyone who has successfully transitioned from adolescence to adulthood can identify.
  
  I said earlier that this Memoir is a layered book. It is easy to see it as one man’s story. It is easy to begin to identify ones self in this story. It is less easy to see this story as an engagement of one man with main stream America. Somewhere in the last third of the book it dawned on me that the story can be read from the perspective that the author’s mother represents American culture, that she is a stand in for the ways the culture did and did not nurture him. There are no good words to describe how we are nurtured/formed, given a hand up or kicked down in American life by the systemic way the culture works. I know that American culture nurtured me differently from Keise Laymon simply because I come from an educated, privileged white family and Keise Laymon is a descendant of enslaved people. Even acquiring an education was more difficult for him than for me by an order of magnitude. The difficulty is the result of institutionalized white male supremacy fallacies, and privilege. It has nothing to do with any Black innate shortcoming. Race is a social construct; it has no basis in biology. If you doubt that assertion or are uncomfortable with it, then I urge you to read the scientific literature that is the basis for that statement. (Google “the biological basis of race” and read the first half dozen hits that come up. For starters.)
  
  Finally, the author has written a love letter to America. He is inviting all of us—privileged and ”other” (See Toni Morrison’s (The Origin of Other, Harvard University Press, 2017) to engage in a conversation about our shared 400 year history.
  And he invites a conversation about our shared future. This is a most timely, urgent conversation. Who are we? What kind of a people do we want to be? What choices can we make that will strengthen our chances of leaving a livable future for our children and grandchildren. What choices will foul the Eagles nest?
  
  I urge you to read this book during this holiday season, at least once, and to write your reactions to his Memoir and share it with someone important to you. Laymon is a voice to take seriously.
  
  November 23, 2018
• This book is good. It’s one of those that leaves you in physical pain from the heartbreak but you love every page. This memoir tells the life from a black son to a black mother and it’s gorgeous. He ties in abuse and violence to his weight and how American violence reacts to black bodies. It wasn’t what I thought it would be when I picked it up but I’m glad because it was so much more. Every word had meaning.