Heavy - Kiese Laymon

Memoir

Rating: 9.5/10

This stellar memoir explores the authors past thru a myriad of the lenses of retrospection in turn. It is an artful rendering of a life and a reckoning not only with where he has been, but where he has come to be. As he writes of his relationship with his mother, it was shattering in the ways that are beautiful as well those that are terrible.  It is a love that continues not only because of everything but in spite of everything.

I have written often about the blessings I have had in my reading life. But there are curses as well.  The most distressing of which is that you may feel the pain of others as if it was your own. From the outside your life and theirs couldn’t be more incomparable, but the manner in which your pain is consumed, how you cast yourself into the heart of it is the same.

While we may walk out of step with others in many ways from race, to religion, to economics to politics; in the place where the deepest wounds take root, we are more alike than most of us are prepared to admit.

Footnote: What is Heavy in this book are the things that lodge in the body.  Consciousness, remembrance, anxiety, despair, regret, love and so much more.  You will feel the weight of it all long after you have turned that last page.