At the very beginning of HEAVY, Laymon writes, "I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie." The "you" is Laymon's mother, and the book is, above all else, about the two of them, written with such openly bared love and fear that it feels like intruding on them to read it. Even the people you know best don't reveal themselves to you this way, and that is, perhaps, some of what Laymon is trying to correct for at least one reader. The heaviness of the title is made manifest throughout At the very beginning of HEAVY, Laymon writes, "I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie." The "you" is Laymon's mother, and the book is, above all else, about the two of them, written with such openly bared love and fear that it feels like intruding on them to read it. Even the people you know best don't reveal themselves to you this way, and that is, perhaps, some of what Laymon is trying to correct for at least one reader. The heaviness of the title is made manifest throughout the book. It is the weight of trauma kept secret, the weight of generations of black oppression, the weight of truths unspoken, the weight of shame, the weight of expectations, and the actual weight of an actual body. I could feel as I read it, the memory of the original lie Laymon wrote which he could not let stand, and then started over to write this book. The contrast of the truth, the way he forces himself to lay out the facts, but also shows the power of the lie and the lies he tells himself in the choices he makes. All of this makes it one of those memoirs that feels singular, that carves out a new way to show yourself to the world. (For me, it is up there with recent works like HUNGER, NEGROLAND, and THE FACT OF A BODY in that respect.)Structurally, it is a traditional memoir. It moves forward in linear time, it focuses on certain formative periods, it charts the development of the person the author is now. It is also, it seems, his own attempt to call himself to action while acknowledging all along the way that one thing he has learned so far is that these calls rarely go the way you want them to. Life does not usually give us these simple structures of obstacle followed by growth, so often it is obstacle followed by failure which leads to more failure and an ever-growing spiral of shame. Laymon has the gift of knowledge, of insight, of words, of education, but sometimes all that gives him is the ability to know just how far he has gone wrong.Laymon grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, raised by a single mother who is also a professor. She surrounds him with books, she assigns him essays, she is in many ways that stereotypical black parent who demands their black child work twice as hard. She also hits him, lies to him, steals from him, and falls into patterns of abuse and addiction that have been passed down to her and that she will in turn pass down to Laymon. As the book tells their story, it also reckons with the heritage of being black in the deep South, what it means to be there, and what it means to leave. It is not that the way Laymon writes about her is unflinching, it is that he lets you see him flinch, see how much he loves her and how much it hurts him to be hurt by her and now to hurt her in return by laying it all bare. I have been a fan of Laymon's for years, his novel LONG DIVISION is one of my favorites, and I have never read one of his essays that wasn't sublime. HEAVY is an even bigger achievement: masterfully written, moving effortlessly from personal confession to societal critique, seeing the intricacies of the author as well as his place in a bigger world. I was tempted to underline something on almost every page. The only reason I wasn't constantly sharing pictures of it on Instagram Stories was because I never wanted to share just one sentence, I wanted to share whole paragraphs and pages. I actually feel a little bit of guilt writing a good review because Laymon is so unabashedly honest about himself, about addictions and abuse and eating disorders, about his family and his relationships, that it feels like a betrayal to share it publicly. It is truly a gift to write this way and I hope we do not squander it.
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