This book is addressed to Kiese Laymon's mom. Raised by a highly educated black mother who was earning her Ph.D when he was born, Laymon relates how his experience of culture, race, and family have defined the course of his life. Because his mother feared the violence of Jackson, Mississippi in the 1970s, she adamantly refused to allow her son to fall into the colloquialisms of his peers. She used academia as a stronghold against violence, but at the same time she also inflicted excessive violence upon Laymon, beating him for neglecting subject-verb agreements or receiving a bad grade in school, with varying degrees of force. Unfortunately the family was caught in a system of racially-motivated violence, of which Laymon was painfully aware. His grandmother was raped. His mother was beaten by her husband. He was abused by parents, babysitters, and white neighbors in the community.
In college, Laymon studied writing. He recalls how the stress of his academic life, combined with the pressure of his mom's expectations and his society's outright rejection of him, drove him further and further into a life of excess. He sought comfort in food, eventually growing disgusted with himself. After writing a newspaper article about institutional racism, he received death threats in the mail. Responding to these peculiar challenges, Laymon takes charge of his situation by managing his weight better. Through this strenuous process he discovers his own self-worth.
In retrospect, Laymon blames white society for his problems. America placed him in the compromised position of undesirable. He lays out a case for his mother about why her approach to combatting racism in her community failed the both of them -- because she neglected to address the perpetrators. In his writing, Laymon finds a voice and a platform for his story. He recounts his continued struggle for recognition in academia when he tried and was rejected time and again to gain tenure while teaching at Vassar College.
