Heavy: An American Memoir

Author:	Laymon, Kiese
Binding:	Hardcover
List Price:	$41.00
Our Price:	$5.25 CAD
Qty Avail:	2

Additional Info
Overview

ISBN:	9781501125652
Publisher:	Scribner Book Company
Language:	English
Page Count:	241
Publication Date:	10/16/2018
Size:	8.61" l x 5.71" w x 0.93"
Series:	N/A

Category	Subject
Biography & Autobiography	Cultural
Biography & Autobiography	Personal Memoirs
Social Science	African American

this powerful, provocative, and 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.