“Every time you said my particular brand of hardheadedness and white Mississippian’s brutal desire for black suffering were recipes for an early death, institutionalization, or incarceration, I knew you were right,” writes the author.
One of the main elements of the memoir is his resentment at white privilege and his techniques to counter it. The relentlessness of his mother’s love-she expected academic and behavioral perfection and employed corporal punishment with a belt-shaped Laymon’s character in ways both obvious and subtle. As an obese black youngster, the author had to learn to absorb cruelty not only because of his size, but also because of his dark skin. He also uses an intriguing narrative form, directly addressing his divorced mother, a poverty-stricken single woman who became a political science professor at Jackson State University. of Mississippi How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, 2013, etc.) skillfully couches his provocative subject matter in language that is pyrotechnic and unmistakably his own. Laymon (English and Creative Writing/Univ. A challenging memoir about black-white relations, income inequality, mother-son dynamics, Mississippi byways, lack of personal self-control, education from kindergarten through graduate school, and so much more.
0 kommentar(er)
