You wanted to read a lie,” is a sentiment expressed both at the start of the book and start of the final paragraph. The book ends with Laymon apologizing to his mother for all he’s written, and all he’s brought to light. What resonates most sharply in Heavy is how Laymon’s love does not resolve itself. Things such as “Love Wins” pepper the sky during protests, but few ask when love alone has won anything that has felt like prolonged justice. “We are in a time of hollow platitudes, scratched on white posterboards. Now the old hymns and spirituals begin to make sense, though most need liberating from a context they have outgrown. In fact, as an elder, I can begin to see suffering as a birth. There is a purpose to all this suffering. Now that your inner mirror is clear, I know you see this too. So did we fail completely? In you I see the soul of black folk. And what of his mother? Caught between the needs of creativity, love, mothering, pushing the race forward, and surviving in a land where not one of us was safe and her desperation, fear of falling backward, dread that her only son might become another Emmett Till.ĭid we fail you, Beautiful Son, because we did not fight long enough, there where you were born? Did not love strongly enough? Did not die from bullets and bombs, broken hearts, depression and soul wounds sufficiently enough? But you have come through, anyway. Didn’t happen, as this harshly honest memoir attests. The suffering of his childhood! Seven years we spent dreaming a childhood for him, for all black children (and ultimately white ones too, in that state) that would have a foundation not just in a first rate education but in an intimacy with joy.

“ Heavy by Kiese Laymon brings awareness that the work of liberation done in Jackson, Mississippi long before young Laymon’s birth, was ultimately not done, or was not done well enough.

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.Ī 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. 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. 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.

Heavy by kiese laymon