There is pressure on him to write a certain way, to keep in mind certain audiences. For instance, silent prejudice makes it hard for him to find tenure at an institution. Other kinds of racism make Laymon's life difficult in strange ways that are subtle. Not only is it still around-it's alive and well. Through this irony, he learns some difficult lessons about racism in the modern era. He is perplexed to discover how seriously some people oppose justice. The more truth he tells, the more the death-threats come in.

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. His mother is desperate about his survival and future, but that doesn't make it easy for him to be the victim of abuse. The interaction between desperation, panic, and violence is well-noted in the memoir. 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. Violence and loveĪlthough his mother enforced her standards because she loved Laymon, she still resorted to violence to accomplish her goals. 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. One should think that a community is helpful to one another, encouraging one another, but in a troubled neiborhood, Laymon experienced a different narrative.

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Heavy and american memoir