Heavy Lifting
Initially, I had no plans of writing about Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy but life and its current situations led me to write a little bit. The memoir certainly lived up to its name and touched on some heavy topics. The theme of heaviness was carried throughout the book and reflected in several different ways. In Heavy, Laymon addressed issues which plague American families because they remain unresolved and this represented the theme of weight and its impact from carrying around one's hurt and baggage throughout life.
The most difficult part of the memoir for me to reconcile as a reader was the relationship between Laymon and his mother. Their relationship included all of the emotions one can imagine. There was abuse, discipline, love, direction, instruction, and dependency. Laymon's reflection on his upbringing provided insight into different ways boys can be abused and the internal processes they experience from those occurrences. The reader learned he was sexually abused by a babysitter who was brought into his home by his mother. Then there was some unspoken abuse that occurred between Laymon and his mother in addition to what he witnessed at a neighbor's home. All of these sexually deviant behaviors surrounded Laymon as he grew up and he never had anyone or anyway to discuss what happened and what he witnessed. Kiese was a smart young man as he was growing up. He had some issues with authority but that was expected given the circumstances of his upbringing. His intelligence provided him with the literal understanding of what he endured but his immature(as they should be at his age) emotions could not lead him to a full healing after he faced the abuse. Instead he had a longing for answers and resolve which led him to reach out for help only to be told to pray and not go asking those kinds of questions. This took a toll on him as expected and he buried it as he continued to age and become an adult. Unfortunately, this dynamic is common in many families throughout America. The country's culture itself is rooted in avoidance and fairy tales so much so that Laymon wrote "I wanted to write a lie...I wanted white Americans, who have proven themselves even more unwilling to confront their lies, to reconsider how their lies limit our access to good love, healthy choices, and second chances." (Pp. 2 - 3). The depth to which lies are a part of the American culture is reflected in Laymon's family because of all of the lying. There were lies between all of the characters including those who love one another. These lies were in all forms and cover sexual, emotional, and physical abuses which were endured by Kiese.
The author mentioned his weight at different times throughout the book and he recalled being well over 200 pounds by the time he is 12 years old. He had enough hindsight to identify that he overate and indulged as a means to cope when his emotions were out of control. There were times of reflection in the writing where the weight of the author fluctuated from being grossly overweight to being dangerously underweight. His shifts from one extreme to the other was a direct projection of the abuse he inflicted upon himself. Laymon was not the only person who was guilty of physical abuse to his body. Although times have changed and there may have been good reasons his mother felt correct in her methods, it was still abuse. As a son Laymon wrote about his confusion concerning his mother's hot and cold emotions toward him. He did not understand how she could be so loving and then cause him so much physical and then emotional pain. Laymon reached out to who he considered to be the wisest person in his life, his grandmother, to try to get answers to what he felt about his mother and everything else he experienced. His grandmother's response was, "Ain't no emergency God can't help you forget...You forget it all...Some things ain't meant to be remembered." (Pp. 60 - 61) Laymon's grandmother's words were indicative of what many families do with traumatic events. They repress them and carry them around as added weight. This practice led Laymon to embody his heaviness as a reflection of his hurt and also kept with the family practice of ignoring important things.
After all of the extreme physical changes Laymon survived, he remained emotionally damaged and immature because he never got closure or processed his feelings concerning his pain. Kiese's physicality was representative of his unresolved feelings and emotions going back as far as the abuse with his babysitter. He was always observant as he demonstrated throughout the memoir. That character trait helped him maneuver through life but it did not help with his emotional scars. There were times when Laymon had the self-awareness to wonder things about women and how women dealt with certain situations even when he found himself in a pickle of his own. This could be from the love he had for his mother and the insight she taught him. After all of the damage was done and Laymon reached a rock bottom of sorts, there was an opportunity for Laymon and his mother to gain closure and resolve the issues they had between one another. Unfortunately, the issues were not resolved to common standards, but it does seem to be resolved to a level of comfort for him and his mother. Laymon recalled the conversation between him and his mother when he wrote "'I'm sorry for hurting you Kie. Do you want to say anything else?' We all broken...Some broken folk do whatever they can not to break other folk. If we're gone be broken, I wonder if we can be those kind of broken folk from now on.'" (Pp. 228-229). These words were what counted as the release or closure for the two of them to get reacquainted and back in each other's life. People in their relationships dictate what is sufficient closure and what they can accept in order to move on. The first step can be the hardest and yet the smallest and this is representative of that type of interaction.
The things I most enjoyed about Heavy were it is rawness and honesty. It was Laymon's account of his life and he did not pretend that his life is representative of everyone else's life. He did not make his experience "the Black experience". In fact, the memoir is so important because it was a Black male experience and it was specific to his upbringing and he did not portray it as anything else. I do appreciate the honesty he provided in the text because it added to the experience of the book. The reader endured with Laymon and that was why the "resolution" was so hard to accept because as a reader it did not feel fulfilling and left the reader with heavy feelings of depletion and longing.
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