Heavy: An American Memoir

As Kiese Laymon's story approaches its end, there's a moment - for maybe half a page - that lulls the reader into a belief in a neat resolution, a final victory, or a happily ever after.

It comes right before the point where the body breaks down and something that I would have seen as success from the outsider, the weight loss, the health, reveals itself as an addiction that slides the speaker past what is healthy into the act of trying to disappear.

The parallels with what failing to reckon with histories of abuse, personal, societal, and the inflicting of terror make this a difficult book to finish. The writing is smooth and direct but the reality that has to be heard on every page and the lies we tell ourselves make reading a few show more pages at a time valuable. And no matter what I thought I knew of racism and injustice, there's the view of terror practiced on the body and mind that history and news can't show.

I realize early on this story wasn't written for me but it's a realization that made shutting up and listening even more important. The personal gives glimpses that bust through what I thought was wisdom growing up. The connection to the myth of American history busts through the idea that any issue from the past is ever really over. The author's mother mentions with the election of President Obama, the backlash to come, which in itself is true - but also chilling in the realization how often every move forward will be met with this backlash.

Heavy should fill readers with admiration for the author's gift and a rebuke to our own need to cling to illusions about the past and present. And the realization that that success is something that has to be fought for again and again. show less

A raw and intimate look at systemic racism in America, cyclical abuse, addiction, self-loathing, and the harsh realities of raising a child while trying to raise yourself out of poverty. Laymon's exploration of the lies people tell themselves (and others) to avoid confronting the pain required to improve was the most compelling for me.

This memoir is addressed to Laymon's mother, a brilliant and passionate but abusive woman who felt the need to toughen up her son through physical abuse to prepare him for the difficulties of being a black man in America. The relationship between mother and son is a fraught give-and-take and colors Laymon's every experience from childhood through to adulthood and his interactions with the world. His writing is powerful, and his story even more so. There is no neat ending here, but in wrestling with his history, Laymon has found a subject worthy of his talent.

"Finally some good fucking [reading]." - Gordon Ramsay

So it felt like I'd been reading a whole heap of very racist books recently. I read this in both an attempt to balance things out in my head, and also to try and understand more intimately (or at all) the impact that generations of racist thinking, writing, and practice have had on the people on the receiving end of it all.

I found this advance copy of Heavy in the little "free-to-good-home" shelf at work, and took it home after looking it up and seeing real good reviews. The only other book I've read from the few I've obtained in this manner is possibly the worst book I've ever read, so the bar for Heavy was pretty low. I did not expect it to set a bar so high that I doubt many books show more in my lifetime will again reach it.

From a purely craft-work point-of-view, this thing is un-fucking-believably well written. I don't even know how to begin to describe how excellently written this is, how engaging, devastating, maddening, enthralling, or moreish it is. I've even less an idea of how to unpack why it is so much of these things. I think from a purely technical standpoint, this is the best book I've ever read. Laymon is an actual master of the craft.

I'm very much outside of the diaspora that has direct lived experience of what this book is about. I've spent a decent chunk of time in America, and in The South, but as a white Australian tourist, my lived experience of these people and these places isn't so much lived-in as it is flirted-with. Seeing the actuality of black life, and black living, as it was, is, and probably will be well into the future, is shocking and deeply harrowing.

Like nothing else I've read, Heavy puts you inside the head of the writer/subject in a way that's engaging like nothing else, and as confronting and deeply uncomfortable like nothing else. I wanted to recoil and escape as much as I wanted to never stop reading it. The idea that this kind of experience is one that not only one person lived through, but millions of people are still living through, and will continue to live through, fucked - and is still in the process of fucking - me up.

Australia is a racist country. The USA is racist in unbelievable and almost ununderstandable ways to me as a white cisgendered outsider.

My family has some fucked up shit in its past and in its present. Laymon's family, thanks to both the immediate and historical consequences of this American racism, has shit fucked up in an alien but immediately relatable and real way. This grounded me and allowed me access to the parts of his story and experience that would've been extremely difficult for me to do and to have otherwise.

It's hard to write about something this good. There's the conflicting impulses of wanting to gush, and not wanting to spoil. There's the overwhelming need to convince the few people that will see this review to go out and read this thing immediately, and I sincerely hope that you will. show less

Juro para vocês que assim que terminei a última página, fechei o livro e dei um beijo na capa. Só performo esse ato em livros que realmente me tiraram o fôlego e esse aqui é uma baita obra em diversos sentidos.
Sempre fico meio assim assim com livro de memórias, nem de longe é um gênero de que seja fã, mas Pesado (Heavy) de Kiese Laymon é uma bomba jogada na sua cabeça (e acho que dá uma ótima double feature com o Fome da Roxane Gay).
Lidando sempre com o ferrenho racismo estadunidense, a mãe abusiva que ao mesmo tempo o incentivava a escrever e estudar, as constantes compulsões (seja por comida, perder peso ou jogos), tudo é alinhavado lindamente para tirarmos nossas próprias conclusões de todos os sintomas e as show more ações que os desencadearam, sem nunca o autor soar didático, mas já sendo com grande clareza.
Caralho, que porrada. Não me admira a grande Alice Walker ter indicado esse livro, não esperava menos dela. show less

A beautiful and intimate memoir about coming of age amidst cycles of abuse, addiction, and racist trauma in America. The author's piercing and melodic voice carries the reader with such confidence and poignancy; hearing this audiobook read by him elevated it to an ecstatic experience. Although the topics were deep and weighty, I was content to listen to the author's wisdom and perspective indefinitely.

Wow. People who know me IRL know that I am not an openly emotional person. I rarely cry and I hate books and movies that intentionally manipulate emotion from people. This cold bitch cried like a baby listening to this book as I sat in traffic on the 59th Street bridge. I was such a mess that the man in the car next to me rolled down his window and asked if I was okay. A NYC cab driver stuck on the bridge was worried about me – that is a lot of tears. There is nothing manipulative about Heavy, the pathos is absolutely authentic I am blown away by Laymon’s honesty, his talent, and his insight. Though his experience is uniquely his, sadly many of the horrors to which he bore witness or of which he was the victim happen to many people, show more and from those experiences comes nothing but sadness and violence and despair. Laymon found the drive to be a better person, a truly good person. Still a person in pain, a self-destructive person, but one who strives to acknowledge and overcome that which limits him. This book is sad, but it is not tragedy porn. It helped me to see gaps in my empathy, places where I was failing to see what it means to be Black in America, to be fat in America (which I do understand in part from personal experience), to be a big Black man in America. It also helped me see the intersectionality of oppression. Kiese’s connection to feminism is fascinating and instructive. The book also covers the power, of literature and the infinite number of forms love can take, some of which are woven together with abuse and pain and destruction but which still nourish. I tell you true, if the opening story doesn’t break your heart, you need to go to Oz and get one. This is an essential companion piece to Ta-Nahesi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. show less