In the first few pages of Heavy, I immediately noticed that this memoir is deeply personal and touches the reader’s heart. Laymon uses daily day-to-day language form in simple sentences. He writes in a way that addresses his mother as his first intended audience. Through this way of writing, it is as if readers are listening in to what Laymon has to say to his mother, his closest friend, and everything in the entire world.
Due to the fact that Laymon’s father does not seem to be present in his life, Laymon is deeply close to his mother and sees her as his closest companion. Laymon and his mother are almost like friends as exemplified through their actions such as going to the casino behind the grandmother’s back and playing tennis (Laymon, p.3-4). Despite the close relationship Laymon has with his mother, his mother is not without flaws. Laymon’s mother deeply cares about Laymon by protecting him from white people. She tells him to avoid contractions when speaking and disapproves of his relationship with a white girl we know later in the book. These things that his mother does to protect stem from the fact that she deeply cares about him. However, they can be damaging to their relationship as well. Hence, Laymon decides to write the truth instead of a “lie.” (Laymon, p.1) Even though it is hard and Laymon wanted to write about shallow topics, he is still determined to talk about the hard truth.
Laymon, Kiese. (2018). Heavy. New York, NY: Scribner
As you said, it seems like the mother’s actions are coming from a place of care and love. And though she is trying to protect him, she may be doing more harm than good by keeping him away from white people. While this allows him to be himself and be free without judgment for being “other”, he doesn’t get the benefit of meeting a diverse group of people, or being with people who don’t look or act/think like him. Like you mentioned, the truth often is hard. Whether that be hard to accept or hard to share, it is sometimes easier to bury the pain and act as if everything is okay. I like how you worded “his mother is not without flaws”, because sometimes we idolize people and think they’re perfect, where in reality they have their own demons and are also human–therefore there will be mistakes and “flaws”.
Hi,
I really liked how you described the relationship between Laymon and his mother and how she shows her love in a difficult way. I do agree with you that Laymon instead of lying or sugar coding anything, he writes the had truth about his life and experiences. But a question I do have is where was the father and if he had contributed in his life in any way, bad or good. Maybe connect the father with the mother and describe hte difference between them and their relationship.
It’s a very tough topic – the racialization in Laymon’s immediate family and American society is incredibly damaging to someone long term. On one hand, it’s good that Laymon had his mother close to him and was able to develop a close bond with her, and that she was able to provide a good life away from the abusive grandmother. However, it is incredibly damaging that race was often brought into every aspect of Laymon’s life by force through his mother. While America certainly doesn’t have the best racial relations in the world, the extremes to which Laymon’s mother forced arbitrary restrictions on him and his development seems extremely damaging.
As we discussed in class, in minority households, centuries of colonial thinking and beauty standards have had a long lasting impact. Taylor and Larissa both spoke about how hair is such a defining factor of beauty and treatment. And we even went so as far to identify how even a newborn baby is going to be judged by “how they turned out”. I can see that through your post we are identifying some aspects of this in Laymon’s life as well. The impression that I am getting si that Laymon cannot be around white people yet he is supposed to act prim and proper so as to be “better”. It’s out of protection but it’s a very dangerous way to mould your child’s beliefs.
What ways can we break this cycle? Of course, a lot of is deeply rooted in American society. But what can we do from within our own families to try and break down racialized thinking?
Hi Yingrong! It sounds like this book is off to an interesting start. From my understanding, it seems that Laymon’s close relationship with his mother is both beneficial and damaging. I am interested in what Laymon means by ‘shallow topics’ – it seems this book will cover intense topics and also feel extremely personal based on the way you describe his style of writing. The emphasis on telling the “truth” instead of a “lie” stuck out to me. If it’s a memoir, shouldn’t the reader assume that everything is already true?
My mother also treated me like a friend growing up, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me until I was much older. Looking back, there were times where I definitely could have used more of a traditional mother figure to set boundaries, instead of having to learn hard lessons on my own. It seems that Laymon’s relationship may be similarly complicated.