Heavy - by Kiese Laymon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Now in a gorgeous new package designed for the modern reader.

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times*
*Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*
*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, BuzzFeed, and more*

The powerful, provocative, award-winning, and universally lauded memoir by genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon.

Defiant and vulnerable, Kiese Laymon's Heavy is a deeply insightful memoir about what the weight of secrets, lies, and deception does to a Black body, a Black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

From his earliest experiences to middle age, Laymon traces his complex relationships with his family, his weight, sex, gambling, and writing, naming the secrets he spent a lifetime avoiding. In the process, he challenges us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and that even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

Award-winning and universally lauded, this fearless, often comical, and provocative memoir has pushed the boundaries of its genre.

About the Author

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of the year by The New York Times. Laymon's bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. He is the founder of The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising, and sharing on their own terms, in their own communities. He is the cohost of Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.