Kiese Laymon
Author
Appears on these lists
Clinton - NYT Critics 100 Best Books
Monson - Mental Health Non-Fiction
MWCC Read a Banned/Challenged Book
More Lists...
Monson - Mental Health Non-Fiction
MWCC Read a Banned/Challenged Book
More Lists...
Description
In this stylish and complex memoir, Laymon, an English professor at the University of Mississippi and novelist (Long Division), presents bittersweet episodes of being a chubby outsider in 1980s Mississippi. He worships his long-suffering, resourceful grandmother, who loves the land her relatives farmed for generations and has resigned herself to the fact of commonplace bigotry. Laymon laces the memoir with clever, ironic observations about secrets,...
Author
Appears on these lists
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: August
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: March
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: September
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: March
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: September
Formats
Description
Written in a voice that's alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared....
Author
Appears on these lists
Easthampton - Families Are Complicated
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: May
MWCC Read a Banned/Challenged Book
More Lists...
MWCC 2025 Reading Challenge: May
MWCC Read a Banned/Challenged Book
More Lists...
Description
"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"-- Provided by publisher....
Appears on list
Description
In this candid look at our relationships with our mothers, fifteen authors write about subjects that they wish they had talked to their mothers about. While some of the writers in this book are estranged from their mothers, others are extremely close. Topics vary widely: from growing up with a deaf mother, to seeking a conversation that won't be interrupted, to relationships affected by the mother's abusive partner. At times humorous, at times tragic,...
9) Bone
Author
Publisher
Penguin Books
Pub. Date
2017
Description
"From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal. From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society's expectations with the raw...
Author
Publisher
The Bitter Southerner, Inc
Pub. Date
[2023]
Description
"Thank You Please Come Again is the documentation of Kate Medley's many road trips across the South photographing our service stations, convenience stores, and quick stops. Along the way, Kate pulls over for tamales, fried fish, and banh mi, but her images uncover the people and landmarks that supply far more than food and gas. In an ever more divided America, these iconic gathering spaces provide unexpected community, generosity, labor, and creativity....
Author
Publisher
PM Press
Pub. Date
[2017]
Description
"This unflinching visual and literary tour-de-force tackles the most pressing issues of the day--including racism, patriarchy, gentrification, police violence, and the housing crisis--with humor and biting satire. When gentrification strikes the neighborhood surrounding Ronald Reagan University, Naima Pepper recruits a group of disgruntled undergrads of color to launch the first and only anti-gentrification social networking site, mydiaspora.com....
Series
Publisher
Mariner Books, a division of HarperCollins
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
"The essays in this year's Best American Travel Writing are an antidote to the isolation of the year 2020, giving us views into experiences unlike our own and taking us on journeys we could not take ourselves. From the lively music of West Africa, to the rich culinary traditions of Muslims in Northwest China, to the thrill of a hunt in Alaska, this collection is a treasure trove of diverse places and cultures, providing the comfort, excitement, and...
Author
Publisher
North Atlantic Books
Appears on list
Formats
Description
**The 2022 Lammy Award Winner in Transgender Nonfiction**
Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.
To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people...
Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.
To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people...
Publisher
Lookout Books
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
"An anthology of Black resilience and reclamation. Born of a desire to bring together the voices of those most harshly affected by the intersecting pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism, Bigger Than Bravery explores comfort and compromise, challenge and resilience, throughout the Great Pause that became the Great Call. Award-winning author and scholar of the Black archive Valerie Boyd curates this anthology of original essays and poems, alongside...