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 In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus … 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).
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 time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. 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. 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.
“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. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] 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).
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Oh my god. Heavy is astonishing. Difficult. Intense. Layered. Wow. Just wow.
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 beside the point but what and how he writes in this exceptional book are, indeed, acts of courageous grace.
Read 6.7.2021
How can someone write so beautifully while at the same time convey such heartache and pain? The words flow like water…showing the author’s vulnerability in it’s barest form.
There’s a part where he’s writing to his Grandmamma and he’s asking her to help him with his words. He then lays out his pain for her, still in written form, and asks for her help again. Broke my heart with the sadness and utter devstation that he shares.
Then you keep reading and are smacked with this: “Everything you thought you knew changes tomorrow. Being twice as excellent as white folk will get you half of what they get. Being anything less will get you hell.” This wrecked me.
I love that I found Literati because it led me to Jesmyn Ward and her club, which led me to this book. Heavy is an accurate title but it’s not heavy in the way you might first think…it’s heavy in every meaning possible and some you probably didn’t even know.
Kiese Laymon’s new book is an emotional powerhouse. He fearlessly takes the reader into the dark corners of his interior life. Wound, grief, and enduring pain reside there. But this book is a love letter. And, as we all know, love is a beautiful and funky experience. Thank you, Kiese, for this gift.
What I have always loved about Kiese Laymon is that he is as beautiful a person as he is a writer. What he manages to do in the space of a sentence is unparalleled, and that’s because no one else practices the art of revision as an act of love quite like Kiese. He loves his mother, his grandmama, Mississippi, black folks, his students, his peers, and anyone else willing to embrace his love enough to give us this gorgeous memoir, Heavy. This reckoning with trauma, terror, fear, sexual violence, abuse, addiction, family, secrets, lies, truth, and the weight of the nation and his body would be affecting in less capable hands, but with Kiese at the helm it is nothing short of a modern classic. These sentences that he so painstakingly crafted are some the most arresting ever printed in the English language. Kiese’s heart and humor shine through, and we are blessed to have such raw humanity rendered in prose that begs for repeat readings. We do not deserve Heavy. We do not deserve Kiese. That he is generous enough to share is testament to his commitment to helping us all heal.
Heavy is an act of truth telling unlike any other I can think of in American literature, partly due to Laymon’s uniquely gifted mind — his ability to pursue the ways we lie to each other while also loving each other, or, not, and the humility he brings to bear while doing so, this consistently brings us back to life, to what matters in this world. Heavy is a gift to us, if we can pick it up — a moral exercise and an intimate history that is at the same time a story about America.
You do not just read Kiese Laymon’s work. It does a reading of you too — one that unburies the stories you thought you would never be able to tell truthfully, and reminds you of your voice to tell them. Heavy marks this quality in its highest definition yet. Written with as much devastating poignance as a humor only the Black South could inspire, Heavy asks readers not just to observe Laymon’s courageous journey to understand even the most frightening complexities of life in an anti-Black, sexist, fatphobic society, but to embark on it with him. In doing so, Laymon’s gorgeous wordsmithing moves us beyond simple binaries of pleasure and pain, joy and trauma, toward a deeper love for communities too often flattened into one dimension. Heavy is a book for the ages.
Heavy is beautiful, lyrical, painful, and really brave. It is both exigent and timeless. Laymon’s use of juxtaposition — of the political and personal, the many stories of dishonesty and history, violence, everything — is all-world.
The best book I have ever read.
An amazing memoir
This book seemed to never make much of a point. If there was a point to it all, then it was missed by this reader.
Whoa. This memoir comes from one of the most unreliable narrators I’ve ever read. I say this not because you can’t trust him but because many of his actions are not typical of a reliable, or even entirely sane, person. Yet there is a twisted logic behind even the most calamitous events and Laymon is not one to sugar coat. He skillfully ties weight fluctuation, sexual attraction and gambling addiction to the real life events of his often dismal upbringing to show how he became who he is. If you’ve ever wondered how black people can continue to live, and sometimes even thrive in overtly racist southern states like Mississippi, this is a fascinating read. This author’s account of his life is raw and real.
Was not entertaining, was rather dark and foreboding. I don’t know what the purpose was, I know I sure didn’t feel good for having read it!
Heartrending glimpse into growing up Black in the U.S.
This memoir, written by an African American writer to his mother, felt like a private glimpse into the growing up experience of African American boys and men—almost too intimate for a white woman to see. For that reason, I thank Kiese Laymon for his deep honesty about his life growing up with his mother and becoming a professor and writer despite all the roadblocks that the U.S. and the South put in the way of a black boy and young man. The book was gripping and it helped me understand and feel the shock, grief, and anger about those obstacles in a way I never had before. It increased my empathy and ability to spot and speak out about individual and institutional racism. I listened to it on Audible, read by the author, which made his story even more powerful and personal, and I listened straight through. Highly recommended.
Wow, just a great read. I’m so glad I read this and highly recommend.
Maybe this book is better than three stars. Some would rate it four or even five stars, I suspect. I tried very hard to get into the author’s head as I was reading it, but it just didn’t happen. There was too much language I didn’t understand, which may be a good thing. There were too any hang ups I cIouldn’t empathize with. I’m not sorry I read it, though, as I will be somewhat better prepared for the next book about the same subject matter that I read.
Heavy had me laughing, crying, angry, wincing and more! The author’s life story soooooo moved me. I couldn’t put it down. This is a book that people, young and old, should be reading for years to come. It demonstrates the power of perseverance, of hope, of love and of family.
Kiese Layton has written a painful, poignant love letter to Mississippi and to his mother and grandmother. Everyone should be reading this beautiful memoir and discussing it.