Bullying the intelligent
One should think that a community is helpful to one another, encouraging one another, but in a troubled neiborhood, Laymon experienced a different narrative. His life was limited on one side by his mother who enforced a standard about school and academics, helping him to prioritize school as a passage out of the difficulties of life in the low-income environment, but on the other side, he was bullied by those who opposed his academic success, as if his good performance indicated feelings of superiority, which it didn't.
Violence and love
Although his mother enforced her standards because she loved Laymon, she still resorted to violence to accomplish her goals. That make it so that every arena of life was one where Laymon needed to be on his guard, because even at home, he wasn't free from attack. The interaction between desperation, panic, and violence is well-noted in the memoir. His mother is desperate about his survival and future, but that doesn't make it easy for him to be the victim of abuse.
Writing and freedom
Through writing, Laymon expects to find the kind of freedom he always wanted, but what he finds out instead is that writing makes him more unsafe. The more truth he tells, the more the death-threats come in. He is perplexed to discover how seriously some people oppose justice. Through this irony, he learns some difficult lessons about racism in the modern era. Not only is it still around—it's alive and well.
The subtlety of racism
Other kinds of racism make Laymon's life difficult in strange ways that are subtle. For instance, silent prejudice makes it hard for him to find tenure at an institution. There is pressure on him to write a certain way, to keep in mind certain audiences. They don't want him to ruffle feathers. The way racism shapes his life is ironic because he is constantly discovering new ways that he is limited by other people's archaic and evil points of view.
The truth about human nature
In the end, Laymon realizes that the truth of human nature is that there are many, many people who are not attached whatsoever to any ethical pursuit of justice. As much as he wants to hope for the best in people, he is constantly perplexed by silent, subtle types of racial prejudice that leave him chronically disenfranchised and silenced. This memoir is a Heavy one because he has a point of view about human nature that is surprisingly negative, although he encourages forgiveness, admitting the frustrations that process entails.
