“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.

In the courtyard, two of the cells are in their original condition– stone walls, rusted bars, the stench of dried piss, pigeon shit. Even in the summer heat, the tourists are lining up for photos. A woman approaches, asks if I will take a photo of her and her two kids. I take her phone, stand in front of one of the cells. I take their picture. “Gracias, mamita,” she says. And then, without thinking, I hand her my phone so she can take one of me. How strong our collective desire to erase our history, our pain. How easily we let ourselves forget.

Diaz reflecting on her family’s roots at La Princesa, an old prison in Puerto Rico from the colonial days, page 343.

As Diaz grows older as an adult, she begins to become more pensive about her family and regrets with them that she had as a child and younger adult. She regrets that she left her mom to rot, turning into a splitting image of Grandma Mercy, which Diaz had discovered was nicer than she had been in the past. Her mom was unrecognizable and truly messed up when they finally reconciled and it partially broke Diaz in her mind, as it only been a decade but she looked like she had aged far more than that. She thought her own mother was a crackhead on the street when she approached, to the point that Cheito took out some coins when she approached. The deaths of various family members, their histories, and the seeming endless cycle of abuse and violence in her family, even amongst cousins, made Diaz really start to think about the bigger picture of her own history.

Diaz, being a black Puerto Rican woman, comes from a unknown history. They can only trace themselves as far back as a few generations prior in Haiti, and after that their heritage is lost to slavery and colonialism. The poverty that Diaz endured as a child is a direct result of the acts of generations of slavery and colonialism. It is a specter that haunts Puerto Rican people to this day, and exists in smaller forms with US control. The needs of Puerto Ricans are tossed aside, as Diaz recounts during the wake of Hurricane Maria, where the true effects were downplayed and many parts of the island were totally destroyed and thousands died. It means a lot more than the simple numerical value would imply, as Trump and the media seem to equate to value.

This section really brings up interesting conversations about colonialism and it’s effects. Meth use, mental illness, violence, sexism, homophobia, poverty, womanizing within Diaz’s own family all have roots in her immediate society, influenced by the colonizers and the society that was forced upon them by acts performed generations ago. The racism prevalent in society holds Diaz and her family back, and causes rifts in and out as people judge her based on her skin color, her hair, and her appearance, and hold her back even somewhere like the military simply because of her roots. I think an important question that jumps out to me from this section is the effect of race on roots, and the cycles that it creates. What can be done differently to try and change the course of these families from having continual problems time and time again, causing unimaginable suffering to poor children over and over creating abusive and/or mentally unstable adults. What parts of history do we need to acknowledge and actively respond to in order to move forward and prevent this sort of thing from continuing to happen.

“Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria” by Western Area Power Admin is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Laymon has just started going to college. He has more dedication to his academics now. In page 122, he stated that he spends nearly all day writing essays and not paying basketball with the other boys. It also stated that Laymon was accused of plagiarizing because of one word. The word was “Ambivalent” and it doesn’t really explain why they believed he plagiarized. On the next page it stated that black students were viewed as having less intellectual capability. My assumption was right, just because it is a big word, they assumed he copied the word or sentence. Another part of the story caught my eye. There are 2 neighborhoods. One being occupied by the ‘rich white liberals’ in the Millsaps neighborhood and the other one was a minority neighborhood with black people which is called the North End. The gates toward the black community was closed off while the gates were always open for the white community. Majority of the workers for the cafeteria or janitorial work were black men and women. This just goes to show that Laymon has witnessed segregation.

As I was reading Heavy, I realized that Laymon was exposed to such a sexual environment at such a young age. There was a part in the text that mentioned how Laymon saw Dougie and Delaney engaging in oral sex and they demanded that Laymon keep his mouth shut. They bribed him by saying that they’ll teach Laymon how to play chopsticks on the piano. Another event that took place was Laymon and Renata engaging in sexual acts. These events have been a changing point in Laymon’s life. He didn’t believe that any girl would find him attractive due to his weight.

“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.