![]() ![]() A present father wouldn’t have helped me at all, if he was modelling harmful behaviour daily. We hear about absent fathers but not present mothers. You were raised by women – your mother and grandma – how was that? Laymon teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi. ![]() The New York Times described it as “a gorgeous, gutting book that’s fuelled by candour yet freighted with ambivalence”. It’s a story about the weight of lies, secrecy and expectation and was shortlisted for the Kirkus prize and the Andrew Carnegie medal for excellence. In the book he comes clean about all they have kept from each other: the gambling addiction they both have but never acknowledge his eating disorders and the sexual violence he experienced as a child. Kiese Laymon’s memoir, Heavy, is about his childhood in Mississippi and is written in the form of a letter to his single mother, an academic, who loved him but also beat him ruthlessly for fear of what white America would do to him if he wasn’t perfect. ![]()
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