Art and Culture - “Remember and Revise” with Kiese Laymon
Shownotes:
Chris and Eddie are joined by Kiese Laymon, a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author of the best-selling memoir “Heavy,” a deeply honest reflection on his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. The winner of multiple awards, including the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction, Laymon’s writing in “Heavy” and other works exhibits a profound usage of prose and ability to enter into his memories to bring forward a voice that speaks to the experiences of Mississippi, specifically of black Mississippians.
Laymon speaks about the important role his grandmother plays in his life, the way in which the influences of our upbringing remain a part of us no matter what changes may come, and the incredible ability of art to unleash heavy truths from things we keep secret. This conversation, but more specifically Laymon’s art, speaks directly to the complexities of Mississippi in a way that helps listeners seek more understanding not just of one state, but an entire nation.
Series Info:
Christians spend a lot of time talking about what is true or exploring goodness, but we do not spend as much time exploring beauty, aesthetics, and the arts. In a world full of content curated to our specific taste, we need more time and space to fill our souls with the kind of art that breaks open our curiosity and makes us come alive. Where does God meet us in the beauty of our imagination? How does art and culture shape our desires and longings?
In this series “Art and Culture,” we’ll talk about imagination, memory, culture making, and memoir writing. We will have three guests guide us through the relationship between art, faith, life, story, trauma, healing, place, and nature. We pray that these conversations allow breathing room for deeper introspection, greater awareness of the natural world, and space to explore the depths of the imagination.
Resources:
Follow Kiese Laymon on the web:
Check out Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy here:
https://www.kieselaymon.com/heavy
Follow Kiese on social media:
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Kiese Laymon 0:01
I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight. Today we have a great, great artist, a great writer, someone who I think is going to inspire us as we think about the role of art in our world.
Kiese Laymon 0:13
Kiese Laymon describes himself as a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He's a best-selling author of a memoir entitled "Heavy: an American Memoir." We talk about that in the podcast. He's won numerous awards through time: the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherword, uh, Isherwood,
Eddie Rester 0:38
You wanna try that again?
Chris McAlilly 0:39
I'll try that again. Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and on and on and on. He writes for the New York Times, for Vanity Fair, for NPR. He's all over the place. He's an amazing soul. I mean, his, the way in which he brings his interior life onto the page and into conversation is, it just, it's very human.
Kiese Laymon 1:04
How he routes his understanding of himself and his life and his giftedness in his family, his grandmother, he's going to talk a lot about his grandmother in this episode. In fact, if you listen all the way to the end, you're going to hear about how he's honoring his grandmother and her work and her impact on his life. But he talks a lot about interior life and telling truth, and there's a part of the conversation where we talk about the power of revision. And for me, that was worth our time today.
Chris McAlilly 1:34
I'm not gonna lie, I think that Kiese Laymon is the living Mississippi writer of the moment. I mean, I think he's the best in that Mississippi has produced in terms of just a pure... The cadence and the rhythm of his prose, his ability to go into memory with imagination and bring forward just the voice of Mississippi, particularly Black Mississippi, in a way that is... He's not writing for a wide audience. He's not writing to a wide audience but his Mississippi, as he says, is colorful. He's writing to try to say something true about who we are as a people, both as Mississippians and by extension, you've got to know Mississippi if you're going to know America.
Eddie Rester 2:17
Right.
Chris McAlilly 2:17
You have to come through Mississippi to get to a true story about what America is and we we do a little bit of that in this conversation.
Eddie Rester 2:26
Well, listen to the episode. You may want to pick up a copy of the book "Heavy," but I think you're gonna enjoy this artist, this Mississippi artist, as he shares about his work.
Kiese Laymon 2:37
We'd love for you to like the episode, share it on your platform, share it with your friends, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a review that helps other people find it. We want people finding this episode. It's worth your time.
Chris McAlilly 2:52
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:59
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:02
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:09
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Kiese Laymon 3:21
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 3:37
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 3:39
We're here today with a Kiese Laymon. Kiese, thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Kiese Laymon 3:45
Thank you, Chris. I'm so happy to be here with y'all.
Eddie Rester 3:48
It's good to get to talk to another fellow Mississippian. It's a real good to have you today.
Kiese Laymon 3:53
Thank you.
Kiese Laymon 3:54
Yeah, I feel like one of the things that I've seen in your work both in lectures or talks or a lot of Zoom conversations through the last year or so, but then also in in some of your work in "Heavy" and other places, I feel like in the background of everything that you do and everything, all of your work, is your grandmama. You talk a lot about her. You write about her. Tell us a little bit about her, Catherine Coleman. Tell us about her place in your life.
Kiese Laymon 4:25
Um, aw, man. So my grandmama was born in Scott County, you know, she had my Uncle Jimmy when she's, like, 16. She was in high school. She couldn't finish high school. One, 'cause she had him also because she had to work. She got married really early. That didn't work out. She married the father. She married a man named John Henry. The father of my mother, my aunties, and when she was 45--when she was the same age I am right now, I'm 46--I was born. And my mother had me when she was 19. So my mom was in grad school. So my mama would send me to stay with my grandmom a lot when she was in Wisconsin.
Kiese Laymon 5:08
When my mama moved back to Mississippi, in, like ,'79-'80, you know, I was just one of those kids who was, like, of Jackson, but I had a foot in urban south in Jackson and the rural, Black south in Forest. And Granny was just, you know, I don't try to mythologize her, but she was just, she was my... She taught me how to pray. She taught me how to run into things that I was afraid of, she taught me the importance of running away from stuff. So she stayed in Mississippi, too, that's the main thing, you know. I mean, like, I am who I am because she didn't want to leave. She thought that she had as much right to that land as any other Mississippian, especially because she worked since she was, like, 5.
Kiese Laymon 5:55
Yeah, one of the things you write in "Heavy" is that, you know, she said about the land that, in this conversation about why she stayed, that she had an imagination or a hope for the land to be free. It is an incredibly powerful thing for a woman of her background to say. I mean, for her to have that imagination must have been incredibly powerful. I mean, that's an incredibly powerful thing to say.
Kiese Laymon 6:27
Yeah. You know, my granny, she's one of these women where she didn't, you know, I don't know that, I don't think that she's ever read any feminists, but it's just like she's got some filter in her head. You know, I mean, like, the Bible is most important book in her life, but she synthesizes that Bible through a feminist lens. So all of these, you know, a lot of us who grew up in the South, we had to read the Bible two or three times before we were 18, but my grandmother's understanding of all of those stories, often has, like, a not just a radical liberatory racial lens, but always, like, a feminist lens.
Kiese Laymon 7:03
So yeah, so she's like, tree the land, you know, her thing is she and a lot of other Black women work on this land, and in these houses, for her or for us to cede that to anybody. She's like, "I don't want more than anybody. I just want equal share as everybody." And she's like, "God, my God, told me that that's what we're supposed to have." You know, so her understanding of fairness is tied up in equity. And when she thinks about equity, when she sees people working so hard and not getting their just or accurate reward, she thinks that's just not an affront just to her as a Black woman, but also an affront to the person she calls God. So in her mind, it's interesting, like, God is feminist. Do you know? But she would never use those words. That's her grandson interpreting it.
Kiese Laymon 7:49
Yeah, I think it's interesting that you wrote, "In my grandmama's world, most white folk are destined to hell, not because they're white, but because they were fake Christians who hadn't really heeded their Bibles. Grandmama really believed only two things could halt white folks inevitable trek to hell: appropriate doses of Jesus and immediate immersion in the Concord Missionary Baptist Church. I didn't understand hell or the devil but I understood Concord Missionary Baptist Church and I hated most of it." You contrast that with the older women from the church who met in homes that was called Home Mission. Tell folks a little bit about Home Mission and what you saw there with your grandmother and her friends.
Eddie Rester 8:31
So Home Mission was, you know, my grandmother was, she's a deaconess. She was on the usher board. She was head usher. She had a big role in Sunday School, but you know, at our church, like a lot of churches down there, women couldn't preach but like all those Black women were holding the church together. They were making sure the bills were paid, making sure that the pastor was paid, making sure that families in the community who didn't have church clothes or book bags had everything. Like, so my grandma and her friends ran that church, though they weren't quote unquote allowed to ever step up into the pulpit. So Wednesdays you know, we were one of them families we had to go to revival, like, Thursdays, and go to something else on, like, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Man, it was brutal, man.
Chris McAlilly 9:18
[LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester 9:18
Chris was a preacher's kid, so he knew that schedule yeah.
Eddie Rester 9:22
It was tough, bruh. Then Wednesday, we went to... Well, Wednesday, they came, they would come over to my grandmama house. They would go to alternate people's houses, but most of the times it'd be my grandmama's house, and it would just be most of the Black women in--well, it was the women in the church, only Black people in our church-- and they would come over and make food for another and testify, you know, and actually listen. And they'd be out there on that porch and sometimes my grandmama would let me be right there. You know, like, right and I'm supposed to be writing and taking notes and being quiet as my main thing. You just had to listen and take it all in and, you know, it's interesting.
Kiese Laymon 9:59
It was, it was... I remember, I remember the first time I saw someone, you know, we call it, like, "catching the Holy Ghost," catching the Holy Ghost at our house, right, because usually they caught it at church. But when one of my grandma's sisters was, her name was Ms. Diggs, they were talking and testifying and just talking about, like, you know, what their insides, what their sort of spiritual world dealt with for the previous week. And Ms. Diggs just started, you know, we call it talking in tongue, and she started, you know, she got it, she felt it. And I had never experienced that in our house. Do you know what I'm saying? So it made me understand that the house and that porch were also holy places, not just the church. That's what it did to me.
Kiese Laymon 10:38
So how have you carried some of that experience of the the freedom of the women on the porch on Wednesday nights? How has that influenced how you, one, how you see the world but also how you write so deeply and just raw about life in the world?
Eddie Rester 11:10
Yeah, you know, I don't know if this is true, but from teaching and writing for a while now, I think we some... I think most people try to emulate that person, if you're lucky to have that person who, you know, loves you, like love-loves you, through and through. For me that has only always been my grandmama. And in this weird way, when you asked that question, I was, like, the honest answer is, like, "I just wanted to be like her." Do you know I'm saying?
Kiese Laymon 11:38
Different situations would mandate that we couldn't be... Like, I wasn't born in 1929. You know, I'm saying, I didn't go through Jim Crow as she did. I wasn't not allowed to vote, til I was damn near 40. I didn't have four or five, four kids and three different husbands. But her relationship with her interior life, and the way she believes her interior life connects her to every other human being, and really every other living thing in this world, like, I wanted to emulate that. And I don't know that that's just, like, something about Black woman. But it's something I only saw in my grandmother, you know what I'm trying to say?
Kiese Laymon 12:16
So, one, I wanted to be with her, I want to emulate her. And as I've gotten older, and it's just harder to maintain friend, like, real friends. Like friends were, you know, friends were my reason for waking up when I was a kid, you know, and all the way through like, shoot, all the way through college. I played, you know, I played sports, too. So my friends were my basketball team, or my, you know, my girlfriends. I always had, I had to have a lot of girlfriends growing up, but my girlfriends, like, we were friends. And so I think a lot of times about my grandmama having her friends, and her friends would come to Home Mission.
Kiese Laymon 12:49
And so it was, um, you're asking about parallels. And one of the differences is that as I've gotten, you know, middle aged, because I have a completely different life--I'm traveling all the time doing this art stuff--I have friends, but I don't have groups of people who I can congregate with. Nobody does now, in COVID. But even pre-COVID, you know, I mean, I didn't have folks that. I had people would be like, "Yo, Kiese is my man. or "Kiese is my boy." And I have people I'd be like, "That's my person."
Kiese Laymon 12:49
But I just, I realized now my grandmother was so quote-unquote strong because she had a community of people who she congregated with, not just at church, not just at our house, but at their house. And sometimes I wonder what happens to people who don't have that, and I don't have that right now. You know.
Kiese Laymon 13:30
I think that's a powerful insight in the the shift of things for us in our world. I think that, as you say, that this COVID era has kind of really magnified that for us, is that the loss of relationships like our grandparents had. My grandfather set out on the porch and, you know, watchde the world go by where he lived, and people stopped and hung out with him, but I wonder... But particularly for your grandmother, those kinds of friendships were so significant for the strength that she had. You talked about her interior life, and I don't know that I have a question at the end, I just think that that's just an amazing insight.
Kiese Laymon 14:09
I think the thing to me, Kiese, about your writing, when you talk about, you know, your insides or her interior life or the way in which words and books have given you access to the interior lives of other people and the way in which you have been able to tap into your own interiority in a way that you've been able to open up to other people. I just, there's something about your writing that... You've tapped into a level of honesty or trying to get through the layers of lies down and self-deception, down to a layer of truth.
Chris McAlilly 14:55
I wonder, you know, I think it's interesting that you framed Home Mission in terms of "testifying" and "listen." I wonder, like, that power and also, like, that the text that was being read in those spaces was the stories of their, the primary texts were their lives and the Bible too, but, you know, they were boasting and confessing and critiquing their way into tearful silence every single time. That's the level of honesty that you just don't, you don't see. I mean, we're so mass and we hide that part of ourselves so well these days. I wonder for you how did you access that? At what point did that come for you? Was it much later? Or did you find your way to that, you know, early in life?
Eddie Rester 15:44
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think the honest truth is that stuff just found me. You know, like, I, like a lot of young people, the things that your mother, your grandmother tell you, you have to have, like, you're gonna push back against those things, necessarily, right? So you can try to develop some sort of personality on your own, and so you can, if you are going to value whatever thing they tell you to value, you want to be able to value it on your own, right? Not just because they told you to. And so, you know, for me church was one of those things, but my grandma, like she taught me, right? And she was very adamant that, like, church, while foundational to her life, and the Bible, while foundation on her life, were not the same things as the teachings of Christ.
Kiese Laymon 16:36
And for her, the teachings of Christ were about what Christ did, you know what I'm saying? As, I say as a character, because I'm a writer, and so when I say, "as a character," I'm not demeaning at all, I believe in characters. You know, I'm saying, I think we're all three characters on the fall right now. And so, so for me, it was like... I don't know when that thing didn't have me, man. You know, I'm saying like, I'm critical of Christianity, critical of the Bible, and holy reverent of both, you know. And when that thing gets you early on, it's hard to remember not having and that thing to me, is--I'm not saying that thing is Christianity or is Christ--but it is a Black Christian missionary community that is, like, in my chest, whether I want to say I believe in God, I don't believe in God or whatever. Like, I can say whatever I want, that thing is in my chest. It's in my chest. It's in my work. It's in everything I do. And that thing, really, is this belief that, like, we must not just be kind, but we must be just, and when if we're not kind and we're not just, we have to talk about why we failed at that.
Kiese Laymon 17:44
Like, that is the foundation of everything my granny believed in, and she believed she got that foundation from Christ. I got that foundation from her. And so when you say, "When did I come into it?" It's just, like, I don't know when I didn't. You know what I mean? Like, that's what I'm that I don't, I don't remember... The craziest thing about me, and I know this is my grandmama, I don't remember not knowing right from wrong. And of course, I didn't. And of course, right and wrong is ever-changing.
Kiese Laymon 18:10
But I remember as a kid, like, you know, maybe it was Halloween, "Kie, if you get Halloween candy, don't go in there because people put needles in candy and stuff." "Okay, I won't." Chocolate and things all over my, you know? Chocolate all in my nose. "Did you eat chocolate? Did you eat any chocolate, Kie?" And I'm knowing I'm lying, I'm like, "No, Granny, I didn't eat no chocolate." "Baby, you got chocolate all over your face. Baby, where'd you get the chocolate from?"
Kiese Laymon 18:38
I'm saying I just always remember knowing, like, when I was doing something that was wrong. And I don't think it's true. But that's what I remember. And I remember that because of my granny. You know what I'm trying to say? Like, she...
Chris McAlilly 18:51
Yeah.
Kiese Laymon 18:51
So I don't know when I ever came into it. I just think when you're born into that kind of stuff, and someone who believes so deeply, it really becomes foundational to who you are, you know. So I make a ton of mistakes. But they're mine. Like, I know, I don't... Often I just have material not to make those mistakes. So, you know, I can't be one of people who's like, "I didn't know right from wrong."
Chris McAlilly 19:16
Right.
Kiese Laymon 19:16
I usually know.
Eddie Rester 19:17
Yeah, it just keeps working on you. Over life. Yeah.
Kiese Laymon 19:20
Yes.
Eddie Rester 19:21
Yeah. So I want to turn towards "Heavy." I read this book a couple years back, and it was devastating to me when I read it. So I when I read this book, I felt like I was reading something I didn't deserve to have access to, you know, and I say that as a as a white male, Southern Mississippian who grew up for most of my life in Madison, Tupelo and would go to Jackson, but I wouldn't, I didn't have access to Black Jackson in the way that I felt like I was overhearing something that I wasn't supposed to overhear in reading this book. And ultimately though, it gave me a very different--because all my people went to Millsaps, and I didn't go to Millsaps. I went to Birmingham Southern over in Birmingham, which is like the Millsaps of Alabama.
Eddie Rester 20:19
But, you know, I wonder for you, you know, I think one of the questions that I had, and this is always in a memoir, but who is this book for? How do you think about that? The audience for it? It's written, you begin the book by saying, you know, I wanted to write... I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie. I didn't want to write honestly about Black lies, Black thighs, Black loves, Black laughs, Black foods, etc. And the book is pitched towards your mother. But I wonder how you would answer that question, as you think about it now, because there are layers to it. Who is the book for? And who's it not for? You know?
Eddie Rester 21:04
I think most things we create are often made for more than one person. I mean, you know, I made that especially for my mama and for my grandmama and for Mississippi, But, you know, when you talk about Mississippi, my Mississippi is so colorful, right? It's, I mean, it's definitely Black, but it's also definitely white. It's definitely poor. It's, you know, some of it is wealthy. A lot of it is hard working. Some of it is defensive, because the world looks at us with such sort of disgust.
Kiese Laymon 21:37
So, you know, I'm primarily writing to the people in the book, you know, my mama, and my grandmama, my aunties, myself as a young person, young people in Mississippi. I'm not not writing at all to white people, but I'm not centering white people, right? There's certain things that my editor, who's an incredible, wonderful editor who also is white, asked me to explain, you know, at different times, like, what, a switch is and stuff like that, and I'm not about to, you know... I love collaborating on art. I love changing things when people suggest but, you know, there's certain things that a particular white sensibility or white northern sensibility might want me to do, that I'm not just, I'm not gonna do that, you know what I'm saying?
Kiese Laymon 22:21
So at different times, I can't make that like white, you know, sometimes wealthy, Northern sensibility the center of my book, because that's not that's, that's... I'm writing, I'm aware of that sensibility, and that sensibility literally edits me and publishes me and all of that. But when I'm doing that hard work, that's not what I'm thinking about really. You know what I mean? Like, they get the book, and I'm sure there are things in there that they can feel, and whatnot, but I'm not. With that book, I wasn't primarily... That book was for home, you know, I mean.
Kiese Laymon 22:55
And home is, you know, some people, you know, like... Ultimately, what I'm arguing is, like, home, while geographically locked places are important to think about home, home is, you know, we live in these bodies, you know, and we live in these families. And we got to do this hard work of thinking about what that actually means. So, that's what I was trying to do.
Eddie Rester 23:15
And then we live in within these cultures and in towns and states that continue to change us, and we change them in some ways. I think that's part of it as well. You talk in the book about, you know, you're reading Eudora Welty when you were in eighth grade, and kind of the journey through reading others. So how is that woven in to "Heavy?" What impact have some of those authors had on you and your understanding of the world that we're in?
Eddie Rester 23:52
Yeah, you know, I started reading Welty, and particularly Welty, it was weird, like, I thought Jackson was the center of the world. But I also had done enough reading and watching to understand that people in the world thought Mississippi was, you know, the belly of the beast. And so whenever I saw anything from anybody from Jackson, I don't care who it was, I would get excited, you know. And Welty, like, you know, I didn't understand political implications of what people was doing early on, I just knew she was from around the street. She was from around, like, she was two miles away. And I was just like, "Damn, that's crazy." Like, she's from two miles away. And I'm reading her in school.
Kiese Laymon 24:35
And then, you know, one day we had to read Wright for... I mean, I didn't read Wright til a long time, like, long, deeply in high school, and I felt similarly. But Welty was different because she was still alive. You know what I'm saying? Welty, I was just like, wow, like, someone who tells these stories. And again, it's a voice that... She would write stories about my grandmama, you know what I'm saying, like about characters like my grandmana. She wouldn't write. Or characters like my grandmama would be in her stories. And so there was a feeling familiarity.
Kiese Laymon 25:06
But also I was just, like, you know, just some of the things she would say, even as a young person I was just like, "I don't like how that sounds." You know what I'm saying? I don't like how it sounds when you call us, when you say, when you use that word to define us. You know what I mean? I like that you're from Jackson, but there's something real racist in what you. You know what I mean? I remember feeling that. Like that's not, we was smart, like a lot of my friends felt that, listening to Welty. But it was all well, it's almost like, "Okay, like, white people gonna be kind of racist but at least she's fun." You know what I'm saying? Like she was, like, she was was so petty, bro. Like, I love Eudora Welty, because, and Flannery O'Connor, but partially because they're just so, beautifully petty man. Like, and they go hard at white people, you know what I mean? Like, just like Faulkner, right? Like, they go hard. They go hard, ultimately, because they want people to be better. And I think they think you can make people better by mocking them, you know? So that's funny. It's fun to look at that art.
Chris McAlilly 25:19
Yeah, and in "Heavy" you talk about all the different ways in which you encountered... So you said that Welty didn't know a lick about Mississippi Black folk, but she knew enough about herself to mock white folk. And then you kind of go through, "I didn't hate white folk. I didn't fear white folk. I wasn't easily impressed or annoyed by white folk. Even the ones I actually met because I'd read all these stories, I met all these protagonists." You kind of get through Wonder Woman, and Star Trek and Miss America and Captain America and all the rest. And you said, "That meant we knew white folk, but that meant as well that white folk didn't know us."
Kiese Laymon 26:43
Yeah!
Chris McAlilly 26:44
I think what's powerful about kind of the way... What i hear in this book, Kiese, is as a kid that grew up in English classes in Mississippi reading Welty, and then going forward and doing an English major and kind of spending my life trying to, knowing that I wasn't good enough as a writer to be a Mississippi writer. What I hear in this is a part of Mississippi that I had never... You know, there's that cadence and the rhythm of Faulkner or Welty that you kind of know that they're speaking Mississippi. And I hear that in... You put that into writing for Black Mississippi in a way I just never encountered. And you know, now I see more clearly the way in which it kind of filters back through Wright and others. But I wonder, you know, I think that journey, you talk about Margaret Walker and encountering her. And, you know, the advice that she gave you as a writer. "They will distract you. They will try to kill you. Don't be distracted, be directed. Write to and for our people." And then it was... Who was it? Kamera? Tony Kamera? Is that right?
Kiese Laymon 27:53
Oh, Toni Cade Bambara, yeah. Bambara.
Kiese Laymon 27:54
Yeah, that you when you encountered her writing, and then Wright and then James Baldwin, you encountered a different way to write to and for our people, as you say.
Kiese Laymon 27:55
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 27:55
And that when you got to Wright, it wasn't just that you wanted to write like Wright. You wanted to "fight like Wright, craft sentences that styled on white folk like him, dare them to do anything about that styling they just witnessed. I understood why what Wright left Jackson, left Mississippi, left the deep south." I wonder if you would talk about that trajectory, both kind of you start at Millsaps and then you end up at Oberlin. You've been in and out of Mississippi through your life. And I know, like, that counterbalance between your grandmother who stayed and the sense that for you to be whole, at times you felt the need to really leave, you know, to do your best work, to be whole, to be healthy. Just talk a little bit about that, because I think that journey is important to your story.
Kiese Laymon 29:00
Right. You know, I think sometimes we conflate like becoming a man with like, just being, like, loving and responsible. You know, like, "being a man." Like, "I became a man." And so I don't know if I became a man when I left Mississippi, but I definitely... The decision to leave Mississippi was the most responsible decision I could have made for my mama and for myself, because, you know, I don't want to overstate it because a lot of things happen to a lot of people in this world and Lord knows Mississippi, you know, terrible things happen. But when I tell you that my mom and my grandma my family never imagined that I would be kicked out of school for taking a library book out of the library that I paid tuition to go to, and returning it. Like that.... sort of it's such a... It's so strange to even say, even though it was like 26 years ago or something like that, but man, that thing hurt, man. That thing hurt, right?
Kiese Laymon 30:05
'Cause, I mean, you know, 'cause we grow up for better and worse being told, you know, "Black kids, if you just read and write you, too, can you know, you can make it and all of this!" And bro like I was trying to get "The Red Badge of Courage" out the library and slid it under the scanner and brought it back and I got kicked out of school for that. So I didn't want to leave Mississippi after I got kicked out of school, which is why I went to Jackson State.
Kiese Laymon 30:32
I wanted to stay and graduate from Jackson State, but I also was really mad at Millsaps. So I would spend half my time at Jackson State in classes and with friends but then I would always be back at Millsaps playing ball, just walking on that campus because I was just like, I should not have gotten kicked out. You know, I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I was barely having sex with any, anybody. And you know, things a lot of people got in trouble for necessarily, understandably.
Kiese Laymon 31:00
And so I'm saying all that to say I didn't want to go to Oberlin. But my mama was like, "You have to leave me." And that was hard for her. It was hard for me and I left. And when I say understand why Wright left, I'm actually lying. Like, I don't know what it would be like to be born in 1908. But I do know, as a Black writer, I didn't want to leave Mississippi and never write about it. Like I knew I owed, whatever decency I had, I owed to Mississippi, whether it be my grandmama, my mama, my friends, like those are all people of Mississippi.
Kiese Laymon 31:33
So I just wanted to when I left Mississippi--and had to leave, because you know, they were, I was getting death threats all the time. And then they started sending death threats to my mom. And then they started, you know, cutting up our tires. And, you know, they started doing all these things. And I was a young 20-year-old Black boy, like, I didn't know how to, you know, I wasn't born and like when you do bad things to me, I'm not gonna just take it. Like, I'm gonna do everything possible to get you back. And that's not gonna lead to anything healthy in Mississippi, you know what I'm saying?
Kiese Laymon 32:04
So.
Chris McAlilly 32:05
Yeah.
Kiese Laymon 32:05
I left. I left. And when I left, though, I always wanted to come back. And I came back. I didn't come back to where I consider it home. I came back to a different place. But I always wanted to come back. I never was one of these people who was like... And it's easy to, you know, it's easy to leave and be like, "Whew." You know, "Bye." But no, that was never for me. I always wanted to come back. Always.
Chris McAlilly 32:31
Right. Yeah, talking about what you experienced at Millsaps. And then also beyond that, kind of the way in which that experience, you can kind of read through that experience to broader implications both for Black people in Mississippi, Black people in America. This is just another paragraph in "Heavy." "Nothing I'd read in school prepared me to think through the permanence of violence in Mississippi, Maryland, the whole nation. I realized telling the truth was different than finding the truth and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words required will and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought pattern shape memory, I had just to arrange, add, subtract, sit, sift, until I find a way to free the memory." I wonder if you could talk about that. Because I've heard you in a number of places describe your work is as revision, and life and work as revision. I wonder, just as you've found your way to that vocation of being a writer and then engaged in that work, what does that mean for you? How do you think about that?
Eddie Rester 33:49
Oh, I mean, ultimately, I just think that it means that all of us who consider ourselves, like, art makers, are never done with any sort of art, you know. We're never done with a memory. We don't understand a memory until we attempt to talk about it. If you attempt to talk about anything, that's art making, right? Because words are just symbols. So you're trying to, like, assemble words around a memory or around a vision or around experience. And so I just extended that. Like, I just think yes, like, this conversation is an attempt at collective and collaborative art making.
Kiese Laymon 34:27
And you know, what I should do is I should go back and listen to this, you know, a few times and see like, what kind of art we created and, you know, if we were all working together or I'll be like, "Alright, let's try to recast it again." It doesn't... And revision doesn't even necessarily mean that we would have to have the same conversation again. It can just mean, "Look, here's some some things that I learned from creating this conversation. And I'm gonna try to revise that into when I do this other thing." You know what I'm saying? And so for me, it just helped me not get bogged down in that whole, like, "Is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it good enough?" Nah. It's never gonna be. I mean, it's good enough because we're trying, you know, we're trying to make art, but is it great? No, it's never gonna be great enough. I'm gonna have to keep working on that my whole life.
Kiese Laymon 35:14
And the most important thing is like, it can help your relationship with capital. So like, you know, when a book publisher is, like, "I think that's done, Kiese. We're gonna put it out and a cover on it and sell it for $25." Everything in the world tells you that if capitalism jumps in, or when capitalism jumps in the market you, like, it's done. But it's not, you know what I'm saying? I'm not done, either. Because like, I'm a, you know, tenured professor at Ole Miss with a blah, blah, blah. Like, that's their understanding of who I am. I gotta keep revising. I gotta keep trying to understand who I am, in the hopes of being the most use to this world before I leave. And I just feel that same principle with art making. It's never, it's never done. I mean, you got to keep... You can't get bogged down on something, if there's other things to do, and other people to attend to, but I just don't feel like the work is the art. I don't feel like art is ever done.
Eddie Rester 36:07
And I'm gonna, I want to make sure we push that out beyond just art, I think life and our understanding of life is never done.
Kiese Laymon 36:12
Yes.
Eddie Rester 36:12
And I think that's when we get in trouble is when we assume that we've hit it. And you know, when you said "assemble words around an experience," I think we have experiences, and as we grow, part of that revision is, and you talk about this in the book as well, telling the truth. Learning how to tell the truth, and not just... Chris is smiling at me over there.
Chris McAlilly 36:14
No, I'm smiling, because I think it's just one of the things that's so fascinating about the genre of the memoir, and the way in which... And you're playing around with that the whole time, when, you know, "I wanted to tell," "I want to write this kind of book, but it was gonna be a lie." And then you were just saying, like, you know, "I didn't know what it was like for Richard Wright to leave Mississippi. I was lying right there."
Chris McAlilly 36:59
And the genre of memoir is inevitably going to be a mixture of what's true and memory and the way in which you imagine what happened, and you're just working it over and working over and working over it in the attempt to say something true. And ultimately, in some ways, like that's that work of trying to get to a place where you can actually say something true is so. And I think this is one of the things about being a pastor or being a preacher, trying to say something true to a group of people ever, you're constantly aware of the ways in which you're a fraud.
Eddie Rester 37:31
Yeah.
Kiese Laymon 37:32
Right?
Chris McAlilly 37:32
You're constantly hiding, even as you're trying to say something true, and it is devastating, you know, to just hold that in your body. And ultimately, you realize that dishonesty is connected to your suffering, and you carry that suffering in your body, uniquely, as, you know, a person, who... I mean, every family's full of this kind of suffering and this kind of dishonesty, you know, and you just had the courage to put it out into the world. You know, I think that's part of what I think is so powerful about it.
Kiese Laymon 38:03
Yeah, everybody. I mean, that's, that, to me is the most important part, you know, like, sometimes... I wrote this piece for Vanity Fair, and it was all about pretty... I mean, for me, it was about the difference between, like, sentimentality and what we call, like, real. Like, you know, things that are supposed to feel good versus what actually does feel good. And so, like, when people meet me who read this book, sometimes, I think what they think they're supposed to say is, "Oh, my goodness, I had no idea," like, "Wow." But, you know, like, you don't have to be 46 to look around at every person you know, and be like, there is... Like, "heavy" is a light word to describe all that's going on inside people and their families. I mean.
Eddie Rester 38:50
Amen.
Kiese Laymon 38:50
You know, we don't have to know each other. You don't have to tell me. I don't have to tell you. But it's a mess. You'll say it's a mess. Oxford: beautiful town, wonderful people. All of those families carry all of these secrets. That, and that's not just specific to Oxford, I'm just using Oxford as example, because that's where we all live, you know. But I just think eventually when people meet me and they want to lie. They want to be like... I mean, on one hand, they want to say, "Yes," which is true, right? "I didn't know that about you." Of course. You don't know me.
Kiese Laymon 39:22
But other hand they want to be like, "I just, I just had no idea." You know, like, but, okay, maybe you didn't have any idea. But you're a human with a mama and a father, whether those people parented you or not. You might have children or somebody you know has children, which means some part of your life is utterly catastrophic. Now, we can act like that's not true, or we can talk through it. And what I wanted to do as an artist is be like, "Well, look, I'm gonna use my art skills my mom, stuff my mama and them gave me, and I'm gonna go into my life. And I'm not just gonna talk about all the bad stuff, but I'm gonna talk about secrets." And I think you got some secrets too, and I think you do, too. And I'm trying to write a book that will enable us to talk about those secrets in profound ways and enable us to be kind to the people we purport to love.
Kiese Laymon 40:09
But I'm under no illusion that my story is any heavier or darker, or, you know, more violent than anybody else's. Like, it's hard to be out here in this world. It's hard to have a mama. It's hard to have a daddy. It's hard to have children. It's hard to have a cousin. It's hard to have a partner. It's hard to be in American schools, it's hard to be in American churches. And I just want to make art out of that. You know,
Kiese Laymon 40:32
I hear two things: The revision, you know, that how we learn to tell our stories truthfully and faithfully, and I think that requires all of us, sometimes it requires me to have you and I sit down some time so I can understand a little bit more about who I am and the truth I'm telling. But the other thing you said there at the en--and Cody's showing us the time, we've got a couple of things we want to make sure you we get to--but the other side is you just talked about the kindness. My goodness, we need a little bit more grace between us in our world because everybody, like you say, everybody's got the chaos somewhere in the background that's humming and speaking to them and changing them and pushing them in some way.
Kiese Laymon 41:16
Absolutely.
Chris McAlilly 41:15
I know you said this a moment ago that this is just kind of what your mama gave you, which was the love of books and the ability to, you know, that discipline to write and write and write and write till you could get to a place where you could say something that was worth putting out into the world. But I wonder for you, as you think about, I've heard you say a few times, "I'm an art maker, I'm a culture maker." What do you mean by that? What do you mean by... I guess what is the power of that? Why have you decided to just invest so much of your life in that? Maybe it's just you couldn't do otherwise, but what's...
Kiese Laymon 41:51
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 41:52
what's the power of people being culture makers?
Kiese Laymon 41:57
You know, the real power, Chris is like, I don't know, there's any power and people being culture makers. But the real power is in like, that's what I love to do. You know, I'm saying my mama helped create someone who likes to go into, like, his bedroom with a piece of construction paper and a pen and come out of there, not with like a picture, but with some something, like, some piece of construction paper with holes poked all in it into a smiley face. Like, I want to show my mom a piece of art, when she sent me into my room when I did something wrong or something good, that she never seen. That made me feel so good.
Kiese Laymon 42:29
So like, I make art for lots of reasons, but one of them is like, it's like basketball, like basketball makes me feel better than anything in the world, man, better than anything in the world. But I can't play basketball anymore, you know, and I ran my body into the ground. So I literally can't play basketball anymore. But making art is a close second. And so I just wanted to, if possible, I wanted to do something with my life and make a living for myself and my family doing something that actually makes me really, really happy. It's hard. And it makes me sad a lot too. But it's just something that I like, you know what I mean?
Kiese Laymon 43:09
And, for me, I say "making art" because again, I think writing, particularly for Mississippi just has, like, all. It is so hard and it's so lonely, but people look at it like grandure, you know. I'm not just writing a book. Shit, I'm going in and I'm going in that room and I'm making something. You know what I'm saying? I'm grabbing from this conversation with y'all, I'm grabbing from, you know, like the color green I don't see from a tree in Oxford. I'm listening to a sound of a baby walk past my house, and I'm putting all those things into a piece of art. And really, I'm gonna try to make a piece of art at all of that.
Kiese Laymon 43:44
Like that keeps me alive. That makes me feel good. My grandmama had her variation of that, you know, but she she didn't do it in art. You know what I'm saying? She did it in her garden. She did it in her kitchen. And she did it in her relationships. But I just make. I'm an art maker, bro, it makes me happy. And I'm just lucky enough to, like, be able to live off of it. Like, that's purely luck. Like, I don't know, I feel grateful for that.
Kiese Laymon 43:58
But one of the things that you're doing with your life is making sure that you are helping others find their gifts as well. Last year, you founded the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Program, which will support and expand the literary arts in the lives of Mississippi children. So you are giving the gift back. So tell us a little bit about what do you hope happens through that program?
Eddie Rester 44:34
Yeah, like vision is crucial to revision. So my vision for that program is that a lot of the graduate students we get from all over the world. my hope ultimately is we can get more students from Mississippi in our graduate program. But I want the students who come from all over the world to be able to learn and teach with Mississippi students and their parents. And so these students are going to be going across the state, you know, holding writing workshops with students between 8th and 12th grade during the school year, and then in the summer those students will be coming to the campus. We'll also be doing workshops with parents who want to do writing workshops, and we'll be going to, and the students will be going to the towns to hold, you know, readings.
Kiese Laymon 45:19
So the thing is, we just want to make the writing and reading ritual, we want to give up we want to give spaces and people in Mississippi more opportunities to make that a part of like what it means to be in Belzoni, what it means to be in Moss Point, what it means to grow up in like North Jackson, what it means to grow up in Madison, you know. We want this to be something that's more possible, not just 'cause we want kids to come to the University of Mississippi. But we just want more young folks in Jackson to see storytelling as something that is part of their history, and something that we expect them to do if they want to. And so I wanted to put some of my money behind it and get some people that I know to put some of their money behind it. And just hopefully, you know, see what would happen in the next 10 years with that initiative.
Chris McAlilly 46:06
Why was it important to name it after your grandmother?
Eddie Rester 46:11
Oh, my granny is dying. Um, she grew up never ever thinking she could step foot on University of Mississippi. So you know, just to have an initiative in her name, this is a person who, you know, could not have gone to University of Mississippi, like, literally, like couldn't have gone there no matter how well she performed. So in absence of like those routes to formal education, she like informally educated in her house and in our community. And I just wanted her to see that one of the things she created was a grandson who went to, among other places, University of Mississippi, and some of the principles that she put in me, I have tried to put into this initiative. And I just, you know, I want her to know that her work kind of sorta extends far beyond where she thinks it does.
Chris McAlilly 47:07
I think it's beautiful. My grandmother is, has been declining through the pandemic. And you know, I've been reflecting on all the things that I've received from her. She, among other things, loved music, baby grand piano, and I've been thinking about how do you honor a woman like that? You know?
Kiese Laymon 47:25
Right.
Chris McAlilly 47:26
How do you honor everything that I've received through her? I mean, we went to her house every single Christmas, you know, I mean, that was where so many meals, so much laughter, so many car games, so much music, I received through her, and she was the vessel. She was the channel and the way in which, you know, you're making yourself a vessel and a channel, broadly through your writing, but also through this work is just inspiring, man. I'm really grateful for what you're doing.
Eddie Rester 47:58
I'm thankful for you and your work and your time. And yeah, thanks for spending a little time with us today.
Kiese Laymon 48:06
Yeah, thank y'all for the work y'all doing and thank y'all for making space for me. I appreciate it.
Eddie Rester 48:10
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Kiese Laymon 48:14
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 48:26
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]