Walker Reviews Kiese Laymon’s Essay Collection: New York Times
Writing, Literature, and Publishing professor Jerald Walker reviewed award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s recently re-published essay collection, “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America,” which covers the topics of race, family, writing, music, growing up in Mississippi, and more.
The collection contains six new essays, to which Walker says, “you have made a once solid collection superb.”
Ever-present throughout “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America” is the blues ethos of stating and confronting the brutal facts of life and of placing a high premium on style, improvisation and excellence. The ethos here is steeped in that particular Mississippi stank, for which Laymon’s grandmother is a living embodiment.
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