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, in Laymon’s multilayered word, heavy-packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities.”

dramatize a very different route to victory: the quest to forge a self by speaking hard truths, resisting exploitation, and absorbing with grace the cost of being black in America while struggling to live a life of virtue…You won’t be able to put down, but not because breezy reading. “ take on the important work of exposing the damage done to America, especially its black population, by the failure to confront the myths, half-truths, and lies at the foundation of the success stories that the nation worships. “With echoes of Roxane Gay and John Edgar Wideman, Laymon defiantly exposes the ‘aches and changes’ of growing up black in this raw, cathartic memoir reckoning with his turbulent Mississippi childhood, adolescent obesity, and the white gaze.”

#Heavy memoir full#

It’s full of devotion and betrayal, euphoria and anguish, tender embraces and rough abuse…the liberation on offer doesn’t feel light and unburdened it feels heavy like the title, and heavy like the truth…Salvation would feel too weightless-as if could forget who he is and where he has been. This generous, searching book explores all the forces that can stop even the most buoyant hopes from ever leaving the ground.” “ Heavy is a gorgeous, gutting book that’s fueled by candor yet freighted with ambivalence. David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly, The 25 Best New Paperbacks to Check Out This Spring 'Laymon won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for this harrowing but tender memoir, in which he untangles his complex relationships with his mother and his Southern family roots.' Maris Kreizman, Vulture, 6 New Paperbacks You Should Read Right Now

Kiese Laymon’s writing about size and race, addiction and ambition in America is nothing less than thrilling - every sentence sings.' 'The most exciting kinds of memoirs are the ones that throw you into the story of a life even while encouraging you to step back and consider the art of its framing. “You won’t be able to put down…It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” ( The Atlantic). “A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger” ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.

#Heavy memoir how to#

By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” ( The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir-winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize-genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” ( Entertainment Weekly). *Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics*