Large Print Book
Heavy : an American memoir / by Kiese Laymon.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781432861421
- Physical Description: 351 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.
- Edition: Large print edition.
- Publisher: Waterville : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2019.
- Copyright: ©2018
Content descriptions
| Formatted Contents Note: | Prologue: been -- Boy man -- Black abundance -- Home worked -- Addict Americans -- Epilogue: bend. |
Search for related items by subject
| Genre: | Large type books. Autobiographies. Autobiographies. Large type books. |
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at East Grand Forks Campbell Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East Grand Forks Campbell Library | MEMOIR - - - LAYMON 2019-LP (Text) | 515519 | Non-Fiction | Available | - |
Summary:
In this stylish and complex memoir, Laymon, an English professor at the University of Mississippi and novelist (Long Division), presents bittersweet episodes of being a chubby outsider in 1980s Mississippi. He worships his long-suffering, resourceful grandmother, who loves the land her relatives farmed for generations and has resigned herself to the fact of commonplace bigotry. Laymon laces the memoir with clever, ironic observations about secrets, sexual trauma, self-deception, and pure terror related to his family, race, Mississippi, friends, and a country that refuses to love him and his community. He becomes an educator and acknowledges the inadequacies in his own education, noting that his teachers "weren't being paid right. I knew they were expected to do work they were unprepared to start or finish." He also writes about living among white people, including a family for whom his grandmother did the laundry: "It ain't about making white folk feel what you feel," he quotes his grandmother. "It's about not feeling what they want you to feel." His evolution is remarkable, from a "hard-headed" troubled teen to an intellectually curious youth battling a college suspension for a pilfering a library book to finally journeying to New York to become a much-admired professor and accomplished writer.