Heavy

I love this book because it took me on a surprise adventure through the life of a black boy (and young man) raised in the South. I met Laymon at a writing workshop a few months prior to this book’s release date, and I heard him read an excerpt from it.

I was immediately hooked on his storytelling ability. The language is so authentic to him and his experiences, and he holds nothing back. I love the vulnerability that saturates each page as I follow him through his addictions and struggles. While his life is so different from mine, the… show more.

I recommend this book for its raw honesty, reflections, and unflinching exploration of personal and societal struggles. Laymon's fearless approach to storytelling digs deep into themes of identity, trauma, and resilience, resonating deeply with the narrative depth of my true crime memoir.

Through Laymon's journey of self-discovery and reckoning with the complexities of American life, readers gain profound insights into the human experience, confront uncomfortable truths, and find moments of profound clarity and connection.

As someone who writes about historical embodied practices such as music and dance, I am always interested in how people write about lived experiences in their own bodies.

Though ostensibly a memoir about growing up in Mississippi, Heavy also explores the possibilities and impossibilities of writing. Laymon, nevertheless, gives lightness to his profound narrative with complex, challenging, yet always luminous prose.  

This wildly important book is about what it takes to become a fully realized black man in racist white America. On top of that already monumental struggle are more struggles: anorexia, sexual violence, abuse, obesity, gambling, the construction of identity, and excavating the self and others, to get at the truth. I’d say that this is perhaps one of the best books on trauma that I’ve read. The sentences themselves, the rhythmic syntax of their musicality, is just one emotional heartbeat of this stunning, painfully honest, and vulnerable work of art. 

Heavy is brilliant, poetic, and…really heavy. Laymon writes candidly and gorgeously about growing up Black in the South, struggling with weight, and a legacy of poverty, violence, and racism. Heavy is a personal, heartbreaking dive into American racism and America's deeply problematic weight obsession. The whole book is written as a letter to his mother, a prominent political scientist, and their relationship is incredibly complicated and painful. Heavy reminds us that food writing isn’t always about sweet nostalgia; it can be much darker and more profound.