*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times*
*Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*
*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, BuzzFeed, and more* The powerful, provocative, award-winning, and universally lauded memoir by genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon.
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).
About the Author :
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of the year by The New York Times. Laymon's bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. He is the founder of The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising, and sharing on their own terms, in their own communities. He is the cohost of Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022. Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of the year by The New York Times. Laymon's bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. He is the founder of The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising, and sharing on their own terms, in their own communities. He is the cohost of Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
Review :
Kiese Laymon leaves everything on the table to tell us about his childhood...This is a voice we've rarely heard speak so vulnerably and frankly about the truth of what it is to be human. And it's a voice that, perhaps more than any other this year, needs to be heard."
-- "Audible.com"
"Heavy is astonishing. Difficult. Intense. Layered. Wow."
-- "Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author"
"[A] raw, cathartic memoir reckoning with his turbulent Mississippi childhood, adolescent obesity, and the white gaze."
-- "O, The Oprah Magazine"
"A challenging memoir about black-white relations, income inequality, mother-son dynamics, Mississippi byways, lack of personal self-control, education from kindergarten through graduate school, and so much more...Unsettling in all the best ways."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"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"
"One of the most dynamic memoirs of the year."
-- "Boston Globe"
"One of the most important and intense books of the year."
-- "Los Angeles Times"
"Staggering...A heartbreaking narrative on black bodies: how we hurt them, protect them, and try to heal them."
-- "Elle"
