![]() ![]() Laymon’s mother, a professor at Jackson State University, grounded him in black literature and philosophy, radical politics, black Southern identity and a deeply rooted feminism that absorbs and feeds him. America’s failures regarding its African-American citizens, Laymon tells his mom, are the country’s fault lines writ large, and he’s not at all sure we can close the gaps. “Heavy” is conceived as a letter to her, following in the tradition of black intellectuals imagining their most heartfelt, terrifyingly intimate manifestos about America to their black relatives, from James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” Like Baldwin and Coates, Laymon refuses to lie about America’s broken promises to itself, and it won’t offer easy comfort or redemption narratives. But Laymon is also attempting to write his memoir onto one person’s heart: his mother’s. ![]()
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