How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

"I want to say that remembering starts not with predictable punditry, or bullshit blogs, or slick art that really asks nothing of us; I want to say that it starts with all of us willing ourselves to remember, tell, and accept those complicated muffled truths of our lives and deaths, and the lives and deaths of folks all around us over and over again" (47).

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon

Essential points: Imagined as a hip-hop album book of essays, Laymon’s book is about how being born black in America means being “born on parole” (43); it’s about writing and publishing as a black writer; it’s about family and friendships, presidential politics, comedy, and hip hop music, health and death. Laymon lays down a theme—how our imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society (hooks) leads all who live within it to slowly kill ourselves and others in America—and then breaks down, remixes, and repeats this theme. Absolutely engaged with politics, literature, and history, the book is also absolutely honest and accessible, refusing to pull rhetorical/academic punches just for the sake of sounding slick, smart, or “New York” (Laymon 67). This book-cum-album is highly recommended reading to all those interested in the moral life of U.S. society. Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others will be thrilled to find discussed in their literature!): racism; gun violence; rape; death; police brutality.

Potential readalikes: The Crunk Feminist Collection ed. Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robyn M. Boylorn (essays), Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates (memoir), Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (essays), Notes from No-Man’s Land by Eula Biss (essays), Erasure by Percival Everett (novel)