Heavy is a “gorgeous, guttinggenerous” (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. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying. 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.
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Kiese Laymon
Heavy Metal Memoirs
Laymon is the narrator and protagonist of his memoir. He lays out a chronological account designed to elicit sympathy and deliver a call to action. He wants his readers to recognize, along with him, how racism in America has corrupted the opportunity of black men and women in devastating ways. Throughout the text, he focuses upon his relationship to academia -- heavily influenced by his mom's high expectations, -- his struggle to maintain a healthy weight, and his experience of violence and oppression in the South. Through his writing career Laymon has found an outlet for his opinions.
Laymon's Mother
She is the real subject of this book, to whom Laymon addresses his writing. As a defense against racism and oppression in Mississippi, she turned to the bastion of academia. She has earned a Ph.D and demands similar excellence from Laymon, despite enforcing these expectations through the very patterns of violence she was hoping to spare him in the end. She is the victim of domestic violence as well as racially motivated hatred in her community, but she is a strong woman who refuses to bend. Her lasting impact in her son's life leaves him both confused and compelled to respond.
Laymon's Gradmother
Heavy And American Memoir
She plays a very small role in the book. She embodies the oppressed black woman in Laymon's imagination. Her story is tragic; she was raped by the local sheriff when she was young.
Laymon's Father
His father is not a major player in Laymon's life. To his son, he represents a continuation of oppression. He beats Laymon's mom and remains largely absent from their daily lives.
This book is addressed to Kiese Laymon's mom. Raised by a highly educated black mother who was earning her Ph.D when he was born, Laymon relates how his experience of culture, race, and family have defined the course of his life. Because his mother feared the violence of Jackson, Mississippi in the 1970s, she adamantly refused to allow her son to fall into the colloquialisms of his peers. She used academia as a stronghold against violence, but at the same time she also inflicted excessive violence upon Laymon, beating him for neglecting subject-verb agreements or receiving a bad grade in school, with varying degrees of force. Unfortunately the family was caught in a system of racially-motivated violence, of which Laymon was painfully aware. His grandmother was raped. His mother was beaten by her husband. He was abused by parents, babysitters, and white neighbors in the community.
Heavy Memoir Review
In college, Laymon studied writing. He recalls how the stress of his academic life, combined with the pressure of his mom's expectations and his society's outright rejection of him, drove him further and further into a life of excess. He sought comfort in food, eventually growing disgusted with himself. After writing a newspaper article about institutional racism, he received death threats in the mail. Responding to these peculiar challenges, Laymon takes charge of his situation by managing his weight better. Through this strenuous process he discovers his own self-worth.
Heavy An American Memoir Discussion Questions
In retrospect, Laymon blames white society for his problems. America placed him in the compromised position of undesirable. He lays out a case for his mother about why her approach to combatting racism in her community failed the both of them -- because she neglected to address the perpetrators. In his writing, Laymon finds a voice and a platform for his story. He recounts his continued struggle for recognition in academia when he tried and was rejected time and again to gain tenure while teaching at Vassar College.