Heavy
An American Memoir
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
*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.
Defiant and vulnerable, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy is a deeply insightful memoir about what the weight of secrets, lies, and deception does to a Black body, a Black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.
From his earliest experiences to middle age, Laymon traces his complex relationships with his family, his weight, sex, gambling, and writing, naming the secrets he spent a lifetime avoiding. In the process, he challenges us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and that even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.
Award-winning and universally lauded, this fearless, often comical, and provocative memoir has pushed the boundaries of its genre.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sometimes, telling your own difficult story can be an act of liberation. That’s the feeling that comes through in Kiese Laymon’s stirring memoir about his boyhood and his lifelong struggles with violence, racism, and body image. Laymon grew up in Mississippi with a single mother who was fiercely intelligent and unfailingly attentive, but also physically abusive and viciously overcritical. Addressing the memoir directly to his mother, Laymon keeps returning to the sheer physicality of his body in a way that’s so visceral, you feel every word. His stories about trying to shield himself from his mother’s barbs about his weight, grappling with discrimination at his mostly white college, and finding his voice as a writer will have you in tears one minute and intensely proud of his accomplishments the next. When it comes to Black coming-of-age stories, Laymon’s is, well, Heavy. But it’s one of the most cathartic, intense memoirs we’ve read in years.
