How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

Essays

Kiese Laymon

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781982170820
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982170837
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A New York Times Notable Book

A revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful” (NPR).

Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential reading. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these thirteen insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language and his artful rendering of experience, trumpeting why he is “simply one of the most talented writers in America” (New York magazine).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Author’s Note #2
• 1. Mississippi: An Awakening, in Days
• 2. What I Pledge Allegiance To
• 3. Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)
• 4. How They Do in Oxford
• 5. Hey Mama: An Essay in Emails
• 6. Echo: Mychal, Darnell, Kiese, Kai, and Marlon
• 7. Daydreaming with D’Andre Brown
• 8. You Are the Second Person
• 9. Hip-Hop Stole My Southern Black Boy
• 10. Our Kind of Ridiculous
• 11. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
• 12. The Worst of White Folks
• 13. We Will Never Ever Know
• A Note on the Author
• Copyright