In the second part of the book, black abundance, readers can see Laymon’s character development. We see his development as a writer when he began to use writing as a way to make sense of his life and what is going on around him. As he is revising, he is forced to sit down and reflect on those events.
Laymon is constantly surrounded by social expectations. As a black person in a predominately white private school, teachers and students expected him to be dumb. Laymon and his black friends would play into this by making up contractions and purposely saying them out loud. Laymon also faces social expectations as a black man to date a black girl instead of a white girl. His relationship with Abby Claremont was disapproved on both sides of the family and most likely race. It was interesting to see that Laymon was called a “sellout” by his friend as if his race was defined by who he dates and how he acts. Similarly, Taulsan also struggles with her social expectations as a male. As mentioned in Kevin’s Post on gender expectations, Taulsan was expected to be masculine. Hence, she would work out in the gym to have that idealized muscular body shape. Both Laymon and Taulsan tried to follow their social expectations but they are miserable as a result.
