Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Npr, Broadly, Buzz feed (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.