How we would tell stories during breathers between games over the hot as all hell summer. Laymon’s words remind me of the middle-school basketball courts we played on a little bit later, how we would lean up against the wall by the water fountain, whether the damn thing worked or not. All of us different backgrounds and ages, so all of us having different stories. He writes, “Every time I sat down to write, I imagined sitting on that porch with layers of black Mississippi in front of and behind me.” I think about the green power box on the block that my childhood friends and I used to squeeze on between every basketball game. In Heavy, Laymon talks about how he spent years writing, envisioning Grandmama’s porch. This reminded me why I started writing, why I wrote. Revised thought patterns shaped memory,” I had a visceral reaction. But when I read Laymon say, “Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. When I first started reading the book, I told myself that I would not mark it up. Laymon talks about his loves and losses, his body, basketball, and writing in Heavy. Say things we weren’t always ready to talk about directly, with the text triggering something for us. Through those readings, we would be able to start conversations. I would look up and share a quote from the book with Pops. I was back home in Miami, sitting across the living room from Pops, who was also reading. I read Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir last December.
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