She gave her only child daily writing assignments - less, it seems, to encourage his sense of discovery and curiosity than to inculcate him with the “excellence, education and accountability” that were the “requirements” for keeping him safe. Laymon addresses himself to his mother, a “you” who appears in these pages as a brilliant, overwhelmed woman starting her academic career while raising a son on her own. It’s full of devotion and betrayal, euphoria and anguish, tender embraces and rough abuse. “Heavy” is a gorgeous, gutting book that’s fueled by candor yet freighted with ambivalence. His mother, a professor of political science, taught him that you need to lie as a matter of course and, ultimately, to survive honesty could get a black boy growing up in Jackson, Miss., not just hurt but killed. Kiese Laymon started his new memoir, “Heavy,” with every intention of writing what his mother would have wanted - something profoundly uplifting and profoundly dishonest, something that did “that old black work of pandering” to American myths and white people’s expectations.
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