Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Heavy: An American Memoir

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

39 reviews

obvious_lia's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Laymon writes about the anti blackness of life in America under white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. He tells us of violence done to bodies, whether by systems, self, or those who love us most. I felt seen in his relationships with food, family, and addiction. I was altered by his words on teaching, writing, and revision. Uniquely compelling and emotional. I didn't have time to stop reading and cry, I had to keep going. Deep gratitude for this book; I can see why it's one of my partner's favorites.

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calcijade's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

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incigiru's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

4.75

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cradman's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

I Will remember: the brutal truth Laymon lays out. They say to write the hardest thing, the truthiest truth, and boy did he. The honesty doesn’t exactly indict, even though it’s written to his mom. Instead, readers are rendered mute. There’s nothing to argue with here. It’s all true.

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ems888's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

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rlgreen91's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This was a hard read. True and necessary but yet so so hard. I often found myself taking breaks, reading whole other books - including Wild Seed, which is its own kind of hard - because this was, as the title says, Heavy.

But as I said, this was necessary. The political is personal and the personal is political. The political and policy decisions we make has repercussions years, decades, centuries later. So much of the pain we deal with as a society is the consequences of deliberate political and policy decisions made by forebearers and ancestors. So much of the pain we deal with in our personal lives are the consequences of decisions made in response to those political and policy decisions. Simultaneously, we are the forebearers and ancestors making the political and policy decisions and decisions in response to that that will cause pain for others in the future. It all becomes this overwhelming, never-ending maze of hurt in many ways.

How do we start to heal on a personal and societal level? Hell, how do we just get it to stop hurting, at least? I agree with Laymon that that requires a level of honesty and vulnerability that many of us, myself included, struggle to engage with or refuse to contemplate.

This was a hard but necessary read - a memoir I will surely revisit but at least a good number of years from now. Maybe then I'll have a better idea of how to answer my questions. Until then - basking in Black abundance. 4.5 stars.

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