kiese laymon
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PageTurners: These Authors Are Taking You Back to School
New fiction and nonfiction titles sure to educate the hell out of you.
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PageTurners: The Simultaneous Attack and Guidance of Literature
At some point in time, we all pick up a book to help us find a better way of understanding who we are. This week, we see that guidance spread across genres
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PageTurners: Let's Go!! A Plethora of Summer Reads to Add to Your #TBR
Dear every single Black author who dropped a book today, As an avid reader, I gracefully thank you for giving me material to make up the longest summer to be read (TBR) list in the history of summer TBRs. The wide variety of books that started off the month is not only compelling but absolutely…
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For the Love of You: After a Year in Lockdown, These Black-Owned Brands Have the Gift of Self-Care on Lock
After over a year of isolation, largely indoor living and ever-blurring boundaries between home and work (what is this “work-life balance” you speak of?), you’re likely in need of a little care right now. And while things may be looking brighter, warmer, and hopefully a little bit healthier, you may not know where to begin…
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'Shame Stifles You': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Rejects Shame With Tarana Burke and Tanya Fields
Shame is a universal condition—no one is immune. In fact, it might be argued that shame is also one of the strongest drivers of human behavior, often causing our worlds to revolve around it. We have it inflicted upon us—especially those of us in already marginalized groups—and in turn, inflict it upon others. We live…
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'Why Is This Time Different?': Ta-Nehisi Coates to Guest-Edit Vanity Fair's September Issue on Art, Activism and Power
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the acclaimed author of the National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me, is helping Vanity Fair interpret the world we unexpectedly find ourselves living in now. On Tuesday, the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Radhika Jones announced that Coates is the guest editor of the September issue, “a special edition exploring art, activism, and power…
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Here's Some Books I Love So Much That I Hate the Authors of Them
Book: Heavy Author: Kiese Laymon. Why I hated that nigga for like three hours: Wrote about that already. Don’t want to re-write it and start hating that nigga again. Book: I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying Author: Bassey Ikpi Why I was like “Man, fuck Bassey” for a day: I thought I was all…
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How It Feels to Be ‘Inside Out’ After 40 Years of Keeping Everything In
“I didn’t expect to know this much about your dick.” I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just start with the bar I sat at while writing this. No alcohol was served or consumed, but I could see my three tour companions: a bottle of Cutty Sark and a bottle of Lazzaroni—the ingredients for…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 17: Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Publisher Synopsis: In Heavy, (Kiese) Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship…
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When, If Ever, Should We Explain Blackness, for The Culture?
VSB, in conjunction with a black-owned and -serving bricks and mortar bookstore in Washington, D.C., Mahogany Books, started a book club a few months back. So far we’ve read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Glory Edim’s Well-Read Black Girl Anthology, and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. Next month’s book is all about love by bell hooks.…