"Heavy: An American Memoir," by Kiese Laymon

Kiese Laymon’s gripping, sad, revelatory book, “Heavy: An American Memoir” (Scribner, 2018) is the story of a black child and then man growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, and his going out into the world, needing to get away yet never forgetting his origins there. His life is fraught with discrimination, early sexual violence, fear, ambivalence, love, hate, and ambition, both in Jackson and in the northern cities where he had imagined that things would be better, less discriminatory, but found he had thought wrong in expecting that. The book is largely addressed to his mother, a professor and single parent, who Laymon addresses as “you.” Her main goal in life seems to be to keep him safe and to help him succeed. She is steeped in the civil rights movement and in teaching and writing and speaking about the condition of black people in the United States. She is both strong and yet vulnerable to unsuitable men and bad habits. Laymon loves her deeply but is also afraid of her at times, and afraid of disappointing her. Son and mother are very close, yet they each have major and often destructive secrets from the other, as each tries to protect the other. His grandmother is also a major figure in his life. The title of this memoir, “Heavy,” refers both to Laymon’s life long struggle with weight, and to the weight of his life circumstances and of the pain and discrimination he and other black men and women and children experience. It is not a spoiler (since it is in the cover flap material) to reveal that, fighting difficulties all the way, Laymon becomes a successful professor and writer. Still, we readers are not let off the hook with a sense of “well, the story ended well,” as it is clear that the problems have not all gone away, for him or for those he cares for, or for black Americans as a whole. This is an intense book, sometimes difficult to read (or in my case, difficult to listen to, as I did on CD as read by the author himself), but that is part of why it is important. I highly recommend this compelling memoir.