Heavy

In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we ve been.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 From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and 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 A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood and continues through twenty five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. New Download eBook Heavy Author Kiese Laymon – kino-fada.fr How do you carry the weight of being a black man in America In electrifying, deliberate prose, Kiese Laymon tries to answer that question from the first page of Heavy An American Memoir to the last He writes about what it means to live in a heavy body, in all senses of that word He writes of family, love, place, trauma, race, desire, grief, rage, addiction, and human weakness, and he does so relentlessly, without apology To call the way Laymon lays himself bare an act of courageous grace is How do you carry the weight of being a black man in America In electrifying, deliberate prose, Kiese Laymon tries to answer that question from the first page of Heavy An American Memoir to the last He writes about what it means to live in a heavy body, in all senses of that word He wr...At the very beginning of HEAVY, Laymon writes, I did not want to write to you I wanted to write a lie The you is Laymon s mother, and the book is, above all else, about the two of them, written with such openly bared love and fear that it feels like intruding on them to read it Even the people you know best don t reveal themselves to you this way, and that is, perhaps, some of what Laymon is trying to correct for at least one reader The heaviness of the title is made manifest throughout At the very beginning of HEAVY, Laymon writes, I did not want to write to you I wanted to write a lie The you is Laymon s mother, and the book is, above all else, about the two of them, written with such openly bared love and fear that it feels like intruding on them to read it Even the people you know best don t reveal themselves to you this way, and that is, perhaps, some of what Laymon is trying to correct for at least one reader The heaviness of the title is made manifest throughout the book It is the weight of trauma kept secret, the weight of generations of black oppression, the weight of truths unspoken, the weight of shame, the weight of...Such an aptly titled memoir because it is indeed heavy, not only speaking about his struggles with weight, but also heavy in the literary and impact sense It is both heady and the words land with real impact on the reader Kiese Laymon has given us a brutally honest look into his life and asks us, the readers to bear the weight of his experiences, and that is a challenging request but one well worth the payoff And that recompense comes in the form of a piercingly written memoir that soars to h Such an aptly titled memoir because it is indeed heavy, not only speaking about his struggles with weight, but also heavy in the literary and impact sense It is bot...If you like memoirs where the author rips their heart out of their chest and leaves it beating on the floor, great, because we have so much to talk about Kiese Laymon s new memoir has left me totally speechless, but I m going to try really hard to make words now so I can tell you how deeply I loved it Heavy is ab...What ever choices or challenges you may be forced to make in life, they are NOTHING compared to what it means to exist as a black man in today s America The implementation of bodycams spawning outrage while watching the evening news, the helplessness at the tragedy felt at a watching, nightly, as lives are changed forever by impetuousness and unwarranted fear This is Kiese s own story as he narrates to his mother His writing is raw, but his accomplishments many, and he along with Roxanne Gay What ever choices or challenges you may be forced to make in life, they are NOTHING compared to what it means to exist as a black man in today s America The implementation of bodycams spawning outr...A memoir that reads like a novel, Heavy grapples with racism, abuse, addiction, rape culture, body image and shame with a kind of radical honesty and radical tenderness that is urgent and necessary Beautiful and terrifying, and one of the most powerful books I ve read in a long time.I m reminded of Roxane Gay s Hunger in the way Laymon unclothes his body and reveals it to us I can t think of another book that existed like Hunger and now I can t think of another book that exists like Heavy You ll want to say you read both of these books in their first moments of existing.As he states right at the beginning of his memoir, Kiese Laymon could have written a lie He could have sugarcoated and hidden, forgotten, and omitted But he didn t, and I m so glad he told the real raw truth in Heavy A word of warning Heavy is going to rip your heart outthan once, and cause you to start looking at your own life in a different way We could all tell lies, we all do tell lies What will happen if we take a page out of Kiese Laymon s stunning book and start telling our ow As he states right at the beginning of his memoir, Kiese Laymon could have written a lie He could have sugarcoated and hidden, forgotten, and omitted But he didn t, and I m so glad he told the real raw truth in Heavy A word of warning Heavy is going ...I couldn t look away or put Laymon s devastating memoir down Laymon s writing is tender, raw, and fierce, ripping through your heart as he explores what it really means to love honestly as a black man who s inherited a legacy of horrific racial violence in the American South.This book had an uncomfortable truth to it I couldn t put it down Couldn t not think about my own upbringing Powerful

• 08 August 2017
Kiese Laymon
• Hardcover
• 256 pages
• 1501125656
• Kiese Laymon
• Heavy