Writer Kiese Laymon Wants To Be Heavy

On the weight of being Black in America... Kiese Laymon has spent his whole life in conflict over eating and not eating. Over the course of his life, his weight has spiked and dipped. In his book, Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese weaves together all these experiences. In doing so, disordered eating, anti-blackness, fat-phobia, and addiction all bubble together. "As artists, we got to be able to talk about all of it at once because it always happens at once," he says. "Food to me is a paradoxical way to get into all of the mess of what we are."

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