I Don't Know Kiese Laymon But I think I Would Like To

Kiese Laymon is a black writer whose interview (Conjuring Love: A Conversation with Kiese Laymon) in  the Los Angeles Review of Books I found thanks to Literary Hub. I like the sound of the man:

Laymon is an advocate for healing through love; he’s anti-prisons, anti-violence, pro-family (blood and chosen). He’s seemingly trying to leave as gentle and heartening a mark as possible on the planet and her animals, and to help as many folks as possible along the way. Which isn’t to say he’s not outraged by what’s happening in America; indeed, a wondrous combination of love and outrage is what drives his writing. Laymon is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Oxford America, and he has recently joined the faculty at Rice University.

But this was what I learned from reading the interview:

JANE RATCLIFFE: How difficult it is for you to write about racism?

KIESE LAYMON: Nobody ever asked that question. I need to write about it so I can feel stable. But it’s sort of terrifying to write through what we have done with this idea of race in this world, but definitely in this nation. I try to sometimes lean into the absurdity of it because that’s how I can get through it. I need to laugh through parts of it. But I’m always crying through it. Because it’s all just sort of terrifying.

In keeping with this, your characters tend to speak very plainly, very frankly, and by doing so the truth of the world is revealed. And sometimes that truth is simultaneously horrifying and ridiculous. For instance, when describing Klansmen, City says, “I didn’t know if Mama Lara had ever been beaten by a man in a sheet.” You have so many sentences like this that just state the basic facts. This is a grown man walking around with a sheet over him …

… with a sheet and two eye-holes …

… which is ridiculous, but he’s also very dangerous.

Mississippi is just packed with absurdity. Starting with the colors: you have this big field of beautiful white cotton. And then you have these Black human beings initially that have to pick it. That’s fucking weird. Visually, that’s weird. And then you have these groups of people over here who might be land-owning who decide at night that they’re going to put on fucking sheets and ride horses and terrorize people who don’t have a fraction of what the fuck they have. If you don’t find the absurdity in it, you go crazy, because it’s so brutal, it’s so terrifying, but it’s also just nuts. They’re wearing motherfucking sheets and they’re burning crosses for people who would never do that to them. Sometimes we forget to just describe the shit in front of us. We can’t get lost in the grinding absurdity of it all. But it’s absurd. It’s absurd that my grandmama couldn’t piss in the same bathroom as your mom. It doesn’t matter if they’re great people or shitty people. They can’t piss in the same bathroom. It’s absurd and terrifying. And I’m not going to let these people not allow me to laugh at shit. Just because they’re so fucking cruel. I’m going to have to laugh at it to write through it, because if I don’t, I don’t know how to get into it.

 Nope, didn't censor the language. This isn't that kind of a place. Live with it.

Closing out with this, you just go read the whole of the interview when you can:

What are some of the questions that you would encourage people to ask?

We always have to be asking ourselves, when do we most want to be a man? And when do we least want to be a man? What parts of masculinity do we not want to be true about us that actually are true? Masculinity encourages a perpetual deception, that once you break it, everything breaks. Which is why people don’t want to break it. I think the question of, what do you not want to be true but is likely true about yourself, is a question we should all ask ourselves, every day, more than once. And how does that thing that you don’t want to be true impact the way you treat other people?