For my final, I would like to explore the meaning and purpose of memoir as applied to Kiese Laymon’s, Heavy. The first three weeks of class were dedicated to reading other people’s opinions about why memoirs are important pieces of literature. From these articles, I found quotes that resonated the most with me and related them to Heavy.

“Memoir seeks a permanent home for feeling and image, a habituation where they can live together” (Hampl 29).

• Unlike conversations, Heavy is written down. It is a way to force his mother to reflect on the past. Additionally, it is a way for Laymon to continuously be able to look back on these memories. Heavy permanently reminds Laymon and his mother of the family’s struggles.
  • “This summer, it took one final conversation with Grandmama for me to understand that no one in our family- and very few folk in this nation- has any desire to reckon with the weight of where we’ve been, which means no one in our family- and very few folk in our nation- wants to be free” (Laymon 6).

“Memoir must be written because each of us must possess a created version of the past” (Hampl 32).

• I was important for Laymon to write Heavy because he wanted his mother to see his perspective. He wanted her to understand the weight that he has been carrying.
  • “I didn’t try to hurt you,” you told me the last time we spoke. “I don’t remember hurting you as much as you remember being hurt, Kie. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m just saying I don’t remember everything the way you do” (Laymon 5-6).

Like Morrison’s idea of Frederick Douglass’ memoir, “[Laymon’s] narrative is as close to factual as he can make it, which leaves no room for subjective speculation” (Morrison 194).

• Laymon is trying to tell his mother his truths. He wanted her to understand that this was, and is, like to be a black man raised by her. Laymon wanted to make it clear that this was what they endured from his perspective.
  • “I wanted to write a lie. You wanted to read a lie. I wrote this to you instead because I am your child, and you are mine. You are also my mother and I am your son. Please do not be mad at me, Mama. I am just trying to put you where I bend. I am just trying to put us where we bend” (Laymon 241).

In Paul John Eakin’s What Are We Reading When We Read Autobiography?, he quotes The Liars Club by William Maxwell. Maxwell states “in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw” (27).

• Laymon was sick of all the lies that they told themselves and that they told each other. At the end of the book, Laymon and his mother have a conversation about lying in the casino. This is where they admit to all the lies that they told and begin to try and better themselves and their relationship with each other. Laymon wrote Heavy because he didn’t want to lie anymore, and he knew that it’d be easier to tell his mother the truth if he wrote it down compared to speaking the truth to her.
  • “We were excellent at hiding and misdirecting acting swearing up and down we were naked when we were fully clothed” (Laymon 4-5).
  • “We never told the truth, Kie,” you said. “No one in our family has ever told the truth” (Laymon 223).

As an assignment for my health counseling class, my professor asked the class to watch a docuseries on Netflix called The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. The docuseries follows the investigation and prosecution of the murder of the 8 year old boy, Gabriel Fernandez. His own mother, Pearl Fernandez, and his step-father, Isauro Aguirre, tortured Gabriel to death. There were numerous opportunities to save this child. The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) was called 4 times by his teacher and even people who did not know him but saw him and his injuries in public called DCFS. Gabriel sustained prolonged trauma and untreated injuries inflicted by his parents, and we know he is not the only victim of child abuse in the U.S. In the U.S alone, almost 700,000 children are victims of child abuse every year and 78% of the time the victim’s abuser are their parents.

In light of COVID 19, children are now in more danger of being abused by their parents than ever. Since states have ordered people to shelter in place and schools have been closed since the middle of March, children that are victims of abuse have not been able to seek help from teachers, school counselors, and social workers. Additionally, teachers, who are mandated reporters, have not been able to alert the authorities when they suspect child abuse since they no longer see their students. Child abuse has already been seen increasing with “reports of a surge in suspected child abuse cases in Texas” (Agrawal), and in New York there has been an increase in domestic violence. Unfortunately, during stressful times it is typical for child abuse and domestic violence to increase. “During the 2008 recession, pediatricians reported a rise in infant injuries and deaths from abusive head trauma, a trend that lingered for years after the economy recovered” (Agrawal). Unfortunately, it is unlikely that COVID 19 will be an exception to this trend. The pandemic will have long lasting effects on all parts of our society, from our economy, to health care, to child abuse, so it needs to be handled with just as much urgency and care.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-child-abuse.html

https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/nca-digital-media-kit/national-statistics-on-child-abuse/

Louis Kahn is considered an architectural genius of the 20^th century. Many people know of him because of the buildings that he designed and constructed, but no one, not even his colleagues, knew much about his personal life. The film, My Architect, is a “narrative of affiliation” (Davis 54) that follows Kahn’s third child, Nathaniel Kahn, in his journey to discover who his father really was. What I observed from the film were bits of Kahn’s personality designed into his architecture.

Kahn was a private man who was always very focused on his work. When Anne Tyng, the mother of his second child, was interviewed, she stated that “he always said that work was the most important thing. That you cannot depend on human relations” (36). This can be seen in how much time Kahn devoted to architecture instead of with his different families. In Kahn’s lifetime, he fathered three children all with different women. It was not until his funeral that his respective families met each other. I find this behavior completely irresponsible and reprehensible. Kahn did not understand that it was insensitive and impractical to have three different families. He lacked the empathy to understand how his actions affected others and this character flaw was reflected in his architecture.  

Richards Medical Research Laboratories at The University of Pennsylvania

When Edmund Bacon, a former architect and rival of Kahn, was interviewed, he stated, “It would have been an incredible tragedy if they had built one single thing that Loui proposed for downtown Philadelphia. They were all brutal, totally insensitive, totally impractical (44).” An example that supports Bacon’s harsh criticisms is the Richards Medical Research Laboratories at The University of Pennsylvania that Kahn designed and built. When Nathaniel Kahn interviewed people who were working in this building, they all only had negative things to say about it. “Temperatures are not constant” (13), “I don’t like that birds fly into the windows and get killed” (13), and “[it] looks like a bomb shelter” (14) are just some of the complaints that these workers have about the building. I think that Kahn failed to understand that not only does this building have to represent his style of architecture, but it also has to be practical. Even in death, Kahn is still influencing lives today. The lives of the people that work in all the structures that he built, the women he had children with, and the children that never got to know their father have all been affected by him.

Memoirs are known to tell a person’s story from their unique perspective, this is part of what makes them intriguing. When writing a memoir, authors create an oxymoron by combining their personal experiences with broader situations that readers might have an easier time relating to and understanding. Treavor Noah’s Born a Crime is a prime example of this phenomenon. He writes about many things in his childhood that differentiated himself from his society. While there are infinite examples of how Noah was different from the people who surrounded him in South Africa, two examples that I thought were the most profound were his mother’s strength and determination to endure apartheid and how she purposefully chose to give him a meaningless name. 

In South African culture, your name speaks volumes to who you are as a person, but Noah’s mother did not want to make his name his destiny. By giving him a neutral name, she was defying the stereotypes of their culture, a subtle way to stand out against apartheid. 

Additionally, Noah recounts his first interaction with an exile when he was seventeen. He recalls thinking that he did not know that it was even an option for him and his mother to have avoided apartheid and left South Africa like other colored people in similar situations had done. When he confronted his mother about this, he remembers her stubbornly saying “This is my country. Why should I leave?” (Noah 31) This is just one of the many ways that his mother purposefully, and stubbornly, separated them from apartheids rules and stereotypes. Other examples include when they tried to have cats as pets, or even when she decided to have a mixed child since she knew the consequences and the struggle that she would have to endure. 

Similarly, Frederick Douglass’ situation as a slave parallels Noah’s situation in South Africa. Douglass has differentiated himself from other slaves by being able to read and write and he deals with the same conflict of leaving home. If he had fled to Canada, he would not have been able to speak to the people of the north as an avid abolitionist and gain their support. 

These purposefully defiant protests are what make Noah and Douglass similar. While these experiences were unique to each author, readers can understand the underlying themes of being different and separated from society because at some point in our lives we have all had an experience that triggered the same emotions. 

Upon reading Frederick Douglass’ memoir and the passage in the prompt, I think of the slaves singing as their own distinct literacy. To the white slave owners in the south, the songs of the slaves meant nothing, but to the slaves, it was their own way of communicating about their experiences, feelings, and even discussing how to escape north. For example, in chapter two, Douglass is remembering the songs that slaves would sing when they would be sent on errands to the Great Farm House. “This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves.” Slaves using song as their own language gave them an identity away from the identity given to them by their oppressors. Applying this thought process to the pieces of Frederick Douglass’ memoir, it makes it even easier to understand why learning to read and write was so important for slaves. While slaves had their own language, it could also be seen as a disadvantage. The difference in languages acted as a barrier and further divided them from the white mans world. This language barrier represents the barrier that slaves had to break down in an attempt to become a member of society.

Augustine makes himself into a character that you almost hate to be interested in because he appeals to people’s deeper or darker thoughts that are taboo to discuss regularly. I think that everyone has these thoughts about stealing and sinning, so he uses his experiences to help his readers relate to him. While most people do not act on their sinful thoughts, I think that his readers are appreciative that someone is finally discussing these hard topics.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

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• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
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The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

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