*Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics*

In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir--winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize--genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon "provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot" (Entertainment Weekly). 

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a "gorgeous, gutting...generous" ( The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon's experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

"A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay's memoir Hunger" ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. "You won't be able to put [this memoir] down...It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities" ( The Atlantic).

BIO

Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon, Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing and the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.

REVIEWS

"Heavy is a gorgeous, gutting book that's fueled by candor yet freighted with ambivalence. It's full of devotion and betrayal, euphoria and anguish, tender embraces and rough abuse...the liberation on offer doesn't feel light and unburdened; it feels heavy like the title, and heavy like the truth...Salvation would feel too weightless--as if [Laymon] could forget who he is and where he has been. This generous, searching book explores all the forces that can stop even the most buoyant hopes from ever leaving the ground." --New York Times

"With echoes of Roxane Gay and John Edgar Wideman, Laymon defiantly exposes the 'aches and changes' of growing up black in this raw, cathartic memoir reckoning with his turbulent Mississippi childhood, adolescent obesity, and the white gaze." --O Magazine

"Spectacular ... So artfully crafted, miraculously personal, and continuously disarming, this is, at its essence, powerful writing about the power of writing." --Booklist, starred 

[H] Scribner Book Company  /  October 16, 2018

0.9" H x 8.4" L x 5.7" W (0.75 lbs) 256 pages

[P] Scribner Book Company  /  March 05, 2019

0.7" H x 8.2" L x 5.4" W (0.45 lbs) 256 pages