Kiese Laymon

i listened to this is audiobook format.

This memoir tells the authors life story from age 9 to 40-something. He is black, from Mississippi, sees so much, endures so much. He tells of witnessing gang rape, enduring devastating and toxic physical and emotional abuse by his mother, suffering eating disorders and addiction, being subject to racial bias as both a college student and later a professor, and more. Despite it all, he sees hope, feels love, and continues to help others. The writing is poetic, beautiful, and authentic. He narrates the audiobook himself. This is probably the best work I've read that helps me better understand black life in America.… (more)

I found myself reliving many conversations, often in tents on the other side of the world, where my eyes - away from the myth of American exceptionalism and innocence, were opened. Guilty of the privileged sin of thinking I knew more than I did. The America not seen at tables of privilege was always a poorly kept secret. But still.

Still, I got to the essay titled 'Reasonable Doubt and the Lost Presidential Election of 2012' - and the sentence, "I also assumed most of those folks were wondering how retribution for this splendid Black American Achievement would be played out on their bodies" and realized the ugliness of American mythology was uglier than realized - centuries of seeing every moment of progress repaid with a violent backlash. And the need to stop overtalking what's being said and to just shut up and listen.

Kiese Laymon lays down these truths in a way that rips the veneer off the myth. It's storytelling at its finest that resists the urge to compartmentalize discussions of justice from discussions of family from discussions of joy from discussions of grief - showing how pervasive hate is. Even after a person has come to terms with its destructiveness, that's only the beginning of the learning process.

Kiese Laymon needs to be read at every level.… (more)