“I’d been forced, since I left you in that driveway six years earlier, to accept I didn’t understand much about any part of the country other than our part of Mississippi.” (Laymon 184)

As Laymon moves up North, he begins to realize a lot of things. To begin, the section Addict Americans starts off with Laymon as a graduate student at 26 years old. His issue with self image worsens throughout the section. He mentions as he travels with his Uncle Jimmy as they go to visit his sick grandmama at the hospital that he was addicted to losing weight. With his body fat at eight percent, he confesses to his grandmama he “loves to lose weight”, further worrying her more. As his grandmama becomes weaker, she asks he “find a real job” to help out his family with bills as they seem to need it more as time progresses.

Laymon decides to get a fellowship and begins teaching at Vassar College. A few semesters in he begins to realize a few things as he works alongside white folks. When he is tasked to mentor Cole, a rich jewish white kid, he realizes that the sole fact of him being white means more than any other quality they may have. It was because of men like Cole that all of his other minority students faced issues of discrimination and had more issues to deal with than men like Cole did. Even though Cole was a dealer of drugs, he simply couldn’t fail because of his whiteness.

“I didn’t listen to one black person who loved me because listening to black folk who loved me brought me little pleasure. I’d fallen in love with provoking white folk, which really meant I’d fallen in love with begging white folk to free us by demanding that they radically love themselves more. ” (Laymon 155)

Throughout this section I noticed a lot mixed emotions coming from Laymon and how he receives love for himself. To begin, Keise Laymon begins to have several issues with his self image and has trouble with self love. An eating disorder develops which does not make his life during high school any easier. There is a hunger that consumes him which he cannot control. As his body weight fluctuates, so does his mental health which does not improve whether he is thinner or gains weight.

““This that black abundance. Y’all don’t even know.” (Laymon 66) In this section of Heavy by Kiese Laymon called “Black Abundance” we learn about the journey of eighth grade in a new catholic school where the majority of the students were white with his friend LaThon.

Throughout this section we follow Laymon as he begins to realize a lot more things. For instance, in this school he begins to date a white girl named Abby, to which Laymon’s mom, grandma, and even some friends do not agree with. Not to mention the family of Abby. This section, we gain insight and learn about the interracial relationship Laymon has. We realize some hardships and differences there are between the two especially when Laymon realizes that the reality is that Abby might never understand what he feels when he sees the police brutality against men like him. To add on, Laymon begins to also realize the reality of what his mother has been telling him the whole time how the white folks will never want to see them win, especially when we begins to see that the police in Mississippi begins to follow him a lot more.

Blog Post 1

In the reading of Part 1 titled “Boy Man” the author Keise Laymon begins writing about about the lies he was supposed to write, but changed his mind mid way and erased everything before. Laymon describes the truth of the black lives that are often meant to be kept forgotten such as the oppression, the violence, and overall their way of life. However the abuse that affects him the most is the one caused by his mother, to which he writes this memoir to. 

The abuse begins when he is very young and exposed to violence. For instance at the beginning, Laymon shares a memory of a time when he and his mom were playing with some rackets, when suddenly they saw woman getting beat up by a man. He beats her in the street across from where he and his mom were. His mother begins yelling at the man and this is when they took off. After this Laymon shares that he and his mom began to pray right then and there. He described the amount of fear and rage he felt at that moment, and kneeling down to pray during that time brought uneasiness.