Heavy by Kiese Laymon

This book is so honest, so poetic, so in your face can't turn away...this memoir is a love /hate letter to Kiese's best friend and most important part of his life, his mother. He is telling her all the parts of him, everything that has happened to him, all the ways she was a part of that, and he is doing it in such a way that it is impossible for her not to feel every inch of what he was feeling experiencing it. I know this because as a reader, with no connection to this author, I felt every inch of what he was feeling experiencing it.

The way he wraps in his struggle with body image and weight with the real heaviness of being a young black boy to a grown man in Mississippi is poetic in itself. His writing style is so vivid that I felt like I was right there with him. I was invested in the story from the beginning to the day I finished reading it.

He starts off repeating, "I wanted to write a lie. You wanted to read that lie. I wrote this to you instead," and by the end of the story it comes full circle to him repeating it again as though he is begging her forgiveness for being completely honest and real in putting out their lives for display. He struggles with this honesty throughout the book, even mentioning in the next chapter, "I didn't want to lie to you. Lying to you felt like cheating. Cheating felt like something I never wanted to do to my best friend."

There were so many triggering moments in the book that I had to back away from it a couple of times. There is sexual assault, molestation, over eating issues, bulimia and anorexia, drugs and alcohol, gambling addictions, race relations, and domestic violence and he is very real about his journey with all of that. So even though I had to back away from the book with every triggering moment, I had to come back because I was already invested, he was telling his truth, and so his story deserved to be told and read.

He's writing to his mother, but he tends to lean towards focusing on his grandmother and his relationship with her. How she was such a huge part of his upbringing, and how she was his advisor even throughout his manhood. Even through the last few pages when he starts to talk about the memory loss she starts to experience. He even ties that memory loss to the white washing of history in America when he writes, "...if our bodies, like our nation, eventually purge memories we never wanted to be true."

He mentions that he was so scared to write the book, but he needed the therapy. He had tried therapy in the book with a partner, and it didn't work because he was so focused on her that he had forgotten to focus on himself, so he needed an outlet to focus on himself, and it became this book. I am so happy he chose this route because it gives us so much insight into a different perspective of what America can be. It's not all a dream.

He says that he went out incognito after writing this book because he was just so sure that people would recognize him and the book was so raw that he didn't want to be recognized. He had let people see the book who were mentioned in the book before he published it so that he could get their permission. Some of the people in the book actually wanted to sue him, so he knew that there was something to be said about them, and he kept it in the book. He had actually tried to go easy on them from the beginning, but once they wanted to sue him for it, he decided that he wanted to make sure that everybody could say at least he ain't lying. He didn't want them to hate themselves, he just wanted to tell his truth. He told it as gently as he could, but he had to tell the truth.

I highly recommend you pick this book up. This was one of my favorite finds of 2021. It has more than just the complicated pieces because between the lines there is a love there that connects the characters in a beautiful way. It is the creation of a beautiful being who was molded by the fire. It is all of the reasons he is who he is today. I am so happy I picked up Heavy and I think you should pick it up too.