Diana Herreros

ENG 201

Professor Dalton

September 28, 2021

Pick A Book

In the memoir Heavy By Keise Laymon, Laymon discusses the course of his life through the struggles he went through and how the factors of race and culture affected the outcome of his childhood. After doing research, I have decided to read this book because it will help me understand the ways race and internalized racism have been affecting people from earlier times until now. After reading the book’s overview in my research, it is discovered that Laymon’s mother was a brilliant and dedicated professor who encouraged Laymon to read and write in the first place but even then, she would always beat him and try to get emotional support from him that a child like Laymon was  not capable of giving. 

In the memoir, Laymon blames the system and how it affected his family dynamic growing up. For instance the fact that his mother was so strict on him and his education whenever he got a low grade in school, since his mother did not want him to suffer through discrimination, it pushed her to push laymon even harder affecting him in the end. The societal pressure placed on Laymons mom directly affected Laymon to which he held a grudge on. 

In the book, Ordinary Girls, Jaquira Diaz discusses the several hardships she has faced growing up in the projects of Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. The book Heavy also discusses the racism that Laymon grows up surrounded by and I would love to learn more about this topic.  Laymon grew up with his mom being the only present parent in his life, his mom would constantly beat him, he experienced sexual violence from his babysitter who then sexually abuses him, and he even experiences older boys raping younger girls and boys. Even the on and off boyfriend that his mom gets is abusive so he can’t catch a break.  The saddest part is how after having all of this to deal with, he doesn’t have anybody to talk to about this, so he then turns to food as his comfort, and he turns grief and rage onto himself using food as his comfort. “It knew that all over my neighborhood, boys were trained to harm girls in ways girls could never harm boys, straight kids were trained to harm queer kids in ways queer kids could never harm straight kids, men were trained to harm women in ways women could never harm men, parents were trained to harm children in ways children would never harm parents, babysitters were trained to harm kids in ways kids could never harm babysitters.”Growing up, Laymon quickly learned a lesson which is that men are taught to hurt women, and that whites are taught to hurt the blacks, adults are taught to hurt children without a leading figure in his life. In the reading he recalls that his mother would correct him when he would use contractions. “Kiese Laymon, what did you do instead of writing your essay?” you asked me again. “I am going to ask you one more time and I am going to get my belt. Why did you not do the work I told you to do?”

I wanted to tell you I hated when you didn’t use contractions. ” After writing this, Kiese recalls that he always wanted to express his true feelings of hatred to those who fouled him, however the words never came out and instead apologized. This demonstrates how his mother would push him to become a different person and change the way he spoke simply because of the way others would treat him if he were different. To add on, Laymon gives us more insight on how his mother was in the quote “The way you over pronounced your words, defended poor black communities in the face of white resentment, and insisted on correcting everyone whose subjects and verbs didn’t agree made black folk in Jackson think we had plenty of lunch money, gas money, rent money, and light bill money.” This shows that Laymon’s mother had good intention for her community and wanted to see her people succeed, especially her son. However the way his mother pushed him, was in a way that would traumatize Laymon, as did every other experience in his childhood. 

All in all the reason I chose to read the memoir Heavy by Keise Laymon was to gain insight on the life of Laymon. Throughout the reading, Laymon remains vulnerable to his audience in hopes of giving perception to someone who did not have anything near to a similar experience growing up.