![]() Shortly after 9/11, Laymon feels an emotional release, walking through Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.īut Laymon is also attempting to write his memoir onto one person’s heart: his mother’s. Laymon knows that his black male body radiates a different kind of energy to the outside world. Heaviness isn’t just physical in this book, but also existential and political. ![]() He spends a lifetime trying to tamp down his shame and his flesh. I know the feeling - who in America feels happy with his or her weight? - but it’s rare to see it conveyed in African-American writing by men. ![]() He steps on the scale at critical moments in this memoir, and nearly every time the climbing numbers chasten him, pound by increasing pound. On nearly every page, he reminds us of how his bulk takes up energy in his brain. His book is of the flesh, about how what happens to our flesh gets inscribed on our souls, and how what we're told to think about our bodies gets branded on us as fiercely as the mark of a hot iron. ![]() Kiese Laymon's visceral "Heavy: An American Memoir" conveys sweat, shivers and raw pain. ![]()
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