{"title":"Kiese Laymon","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the profound and unflinchingly honest works of Kiese Laymon. From searing memoirs to insightful essays, discover his powerful explorations of race, family, and American identity. Begin your reading journey here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"heavy-book-kiese-laymon-9781501125652","title":"Heavy","description":"\u003cb\u003e*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times*\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e*Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e*Named a Best Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR, \u003ci\u003eBroadly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e, and more*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThe powerful, provocative, award-winning, and universally lauded memoir by genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e is a \"gorgeous, gutting...generous\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon's experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay's memoir \u003ci\u003eHunger\u003c\/i\u003e\" (\u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. \"You won't be able to put [this memoir] down...It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49506960933137,"sku":"CIN1501125656G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49890109063441,"sku":"CIN1501125656VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49981325672721,"sku":"CIN1501125656A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50682367770897,"sku":"CIN1501125656LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031297949969,"sku":"NIN9781501125652","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53251285811473,"sku":"GOR014831917","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1501125656.jpg?v=1751021815"},{"product_id":"heavy-book-kiese-laymon-9781526605757","title":"Heavy","description":"'So beautifully written, so insightful, so thoughtful, so honest, so vulnerable, so intimate ... A gift' JESMYN WARD 'Wow. Just wow' ROXANE GAY 'Unflinchingly honest' RENI EDDO-LODGE 'An act of truth-telling unlike any other I can think of' ALEXANDER CHEE A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR  The story of the black male experience in America you’ve never read before  Kiese Laymon grew 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 career as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, abuse, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing and ultimately gambling.   In Heavy, by attempting to name secrets and lies that he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few know how to love responsibly, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.  A defiant yet vulnerable memoir that Laymon started writing when he was eleven, Heavy is an insightful exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship and family.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49507975627025,"sku":"GOR009392155","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52109059621137,"sku":"GOR010280908","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526605759.jpg?v=1751457173"},{"product_id":"heavy-book-kiese-laymon-9781526605764","title":"Heavy","description":"_______________  'So beautifully written, so insightful, so thoughtful, so honest, so vulnerable, so intimate ... A gift' - Jesmyn Ward 'Wow. Just wow' - Roxane Gay 'Unflinchingly honest' - Reni Eddo-Lodge 'An act of truth-telling unlike any other I can think of' - Alexander Chee _______________  A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR _______________  The story of the black male experience in America you’ve never read before  Kiese Laymon grew 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 career as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, abuse, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing and ultimately gambling.   In Heavy, by attempting to name secrets and lies that he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few know how to love responsibly, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.  A defiant yet vulnerable memoir that Laymon started writing when he was eleven, Heavy is an insightful exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship and family. _______________  'Laymon's writing, as rich and elegant as mahogany, offers us comfort even as we grapple with his book's unflinching honesty ... Excellent' - New York Times","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49569017364753,"sku":"GOR010231003","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49618927386897,"sku":"GOR010196439","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49629958308113,"sku":"GOR010923152","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732379148561,"sku":"NGR9781526605764","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49770439934225,"sku":"CIN1526605767G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53190728319249,"sku":"GOR014797764","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526605767.jpg?v=1751055134"},{"product_id":"long-division-book-kiese-laymon-9781982174828","title":"Long Division","description":"From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49576034730257,"sku":"GOR011707986","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742257062161,"sku":"NGR9781982174828","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49768768569617,"sku":"CIN198217482XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49876754661649,"sku":"CIN198217482XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50132939178257,"sku":"GOR012790755","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50404931862801,"sku":"CIN198217482XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50713890914577,"sku":"GOR011806767","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50990979055889,"sku":"NIN9781982174828","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/198217482X.jpg?v=1750998381"},{"product_id":"long-division-book-kiese-laymon-9781932841725","title":"Long Division","description":"Kiese Laymon's debut novel is a Twain-esque exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in Post-Katrina Mississippi, written in a voice that's alternately funny, lacerating, and wise. The book contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, 14-year-old Citoyen \"City\" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.  Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called \"Long Division.\" He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson--but \"Long Division\" is set in 1985. This 1985 City, along with his friend and love-object, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet protect his family from the Klan. City's two stories ultimately converge in the mysterious work shed behind his grandmother's, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49594791952657,"sku":"GOR009365731","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49898050781457,"sku":"CIN1932841725G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49900481937681,"sku":"CIN1932841725VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":53349421809937,"sku":"CIN1932841725LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53395625705745,"sku":"GOR009177959","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1932841725.jpg?v=1750804354"},{"product_id":"how-to-slowly-kill-yourself-and-others-in-america-book-kiese-laymon-9781932841770","title":"How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America","description":"Author and essayist Kiese Laymon is one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American writing. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of his essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in Mississippi. In this collection, Laymon deals in depth with his own personal story, which is filled with trials and reflections that illuminate under-appreciated aspects of contemporary American life. New and unexpected in contemporary American writing, Laymon's voice mixes the colloquial with the acerbic, while sharp insights and blast-furnace heat calls to mind a black 21st-century Mark Twain. Much like Twain, Laymon's writing is steeped in controversial issues both private and public. This collection introduces Laymon as a writer who balances volatile concepts on a razor's edge and chops up much-discussed and often-misunderstood topics with his scathing humor and fresh, unexpected takes on the ongoing absurdities, frivolities, and calamities of American life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49669683609873,"sku":"GOR013768409","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49768813035793,"sku":"CIN1932841776G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50092173492497,"sku":"CIN1932841776VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50160845586705,"sku":"GOR007425047","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1932841776.jpg?v=1750727223"},{"product_id":"heavy-book-kiese-laymon-9781501125669","title":"Heavy","description":"\u003cb\u003e*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times*\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e*Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e*Named a Best Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, NPR, \u003ci\u003eBroadly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e, and more*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThe powerful, provocative, award-winning, and universally lauded memoir by genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e is a \"gorgeous, gutting...generous\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon's experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay's memoir \u003ci\u003eHunger\u003c\/i\u003e\" (\u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. \"You won't be able to put [this memoir] down...It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49677429735697,"sku":"CIN1501125664G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49746337038609,"sku":"CIN1501125664A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49768597127441,"sku":"CIN1501125664VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50988142035217,"sku":"NIN9781501125669","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51524441309457,"sku":"GOR014316132","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1501125664.jpg?v=1751116766"},{"product_id":"how-to-slowly-kill-yourself-and-others-in-america-book-kiese-laymon-9781408868164","title":"How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America","description":"'I was stunned into stillness' Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist  ‘I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies – once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the left-overs of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I’ve helped many folks say yes to life, but I’ve definitely aided in a few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun’  Kiese Laymon grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. That was where he started to write and where he began to seek to create an honest account of living in the US, a country striving to declare itself multi-cultural, post-racial and mostly innocent. This is that account.  Drawing on his own personal experiences, these essays are Laymon’s attempt to deal with many issues occupying America today, from race, identity and writing to music, celebrity and violence. Through letters between his own disparate family members, pleas to performers whose voices will never be heard again, recollections of his own failure to become a world-famous emcee, analysis of the growing culture of fear in the media and detailed accounts of his clashes with an education system that has both advanced and failed the generation he grew up in, Laymon gets closer not only to the truth behind himself, but to the promises behind the promised land.  Searing and passionate, this timely collection of essays introduces a vibrant new voice in US literature and offers a unique insight into the forces that are tearing America apart today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49712854073617,"sku":"GOR007443601","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50000903569681,"sku":"GOR011606749","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50670726480145,"sku":"GOR008562701","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52549805015313,"sku":"CIN1408868164VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408868164.jpg?v=1750825959"},{"product_id":"how-to-slowly-kill-yourself-and-others-in-america-book-kiese-laymon-9781982170820","title":"How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA 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).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, \u003ci\u003eHow to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America\u003c\/i\u003e 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\" (\u003ci\u003eNew York\u003c\/i\u003e magazine).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49781353742609,"sku":"CIN1982170824G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50093829751057,"sku":"CIN1982170824VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50303733432593,"sku":"CIN1982170824A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50994271191313,"sku":"NIN9781982170820","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52109447954705,"sku":"GOR012098633","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1982170824.jpg?v=1750805500"},{"product_id":"heavy-book-kiese-laymon-9781526605740","title":"Heavy","description":"'So beautifully written, so insightful, so thoughtful, so honest, so vulnerable, so intimate ... A gift' JESMYN WARD 'Wow. Just wow' ROXANE GAY 'Unflinchingly honest' RENI EDDO-LODGE 'An act of truth-telling unlike any other I can think of' ALEXANDER CHEE A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR  The story of the black male experience in America you’ve never read before  Kiese Laymon grew 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 career as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, abuse, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing and ultimately gambling.   In Heavy, by attempting to name secrets and lies that he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few know how to love responsibly, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.  A defiant yet vulnerable memoir that Laymon started writing when he was eleven, Heavy is an insightful exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship and family.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49788321202449,"sku":"CIN1526605740G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49910175170833,"sku":"CIN1526605740VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526605740.jpg?v=1750760667"},{"product_id":"long-division-book-kiese-laymon-9781982177362","title":"Long Division","description":"From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.   Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.   Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.   City’s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance. Brilliantly “skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism” (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike “smart, funny, and sharp” (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history “that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves” (The Wall Street Journal).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50300756197649,"sku":"CIN1982177365G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51182880751889,"sku":"CIN1982177365VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52862230266129,"sku":"GOR014645802","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53266355585297,"sku":"GOR014845507","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1982177365.jpg?v=1751157052"},{"product_id":"heavy-an-american-memoir-cd-9781508265832","title":"Heavy","description":"\u003cb\u003e*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times*\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e*Named a Best Book of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly, \u003c\/i\u003eNPR, \u003ci\u003eBroadly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/i\u003e (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal \u003c\/i\u003e(Biography\/Memoirs), \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003c\/i\u003e(Nonfiction), \u003ci\u003eSouthern Living \u003c\/i\u003e(Southern), \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Critics\u003c\/i\u003e*\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003eIn this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir--winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize--genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot (\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eHeavy\u003c\/i\u003e, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. 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Three Black boys spend one special summer exploring the Mississippi woods and woulds and coulds of sharing the kind of freeing friendship that is love.  Watched over and given space to discover by Grandmama and Mama Lara, New York, Country, and little C find camaraderie in their contrasts and all the unspoken things between them while playing games of marco polo in the thick garden and sledding on cardboard by the underpass.   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