{"id":2362,"date":"2019-10-14T09:45:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/?p=2362"},"modified":"2019-10-17T21:37:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T01:37:52","slug":"interview-with-kiese-laymon-by-symone-mann-and-adrian-burr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/2019\/10\/14\/interview-with-kiese-laymon-by-symone-mann-and-adrian-burr\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Kiese Laymon by Symone Mann and Adrian Burr"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. His writing has been featured in a plethora of major publications, including The New York Times<\/em>, The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, ESPN The Magazine<\/em>, Oxford American<\/em>, and Ebony<\/em>. Laymon is the author of Long Division<\/em>, a novel that explores the persistence of racism, violence, sexual repression, and inequity in American society, and a collection of essays entitled\u00a0How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America<\/em>. His memoir, Heavy<\/em>, was named a Best Book of 2018 by The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/i>,\u00a0Publishers Weekly,\u00a0<\/i>NPR<\/em>,\u00a0Buzzfeed, Library Journal\u00a0<\/i>,\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>,\u00a0Southern Living<\/i>, and\u00a0Entertainment Weekly. <\/i>During his October 2018\u00a0visit to Ohio Wesleyan, Laymon joined Prof. Butcher’s ENG 496: Literary Editing<\/em>\u00a0class for an interview about his experiences as an essayist, novelist, and memoirist.<\/p>\n

In Literary Editing <\/em>we talk a lot about “our room of writers”–the writers we see ourselves in conversation with or who we would like to appreciate our work.\u00a0 Who would be in your room of writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I hear that question I think: “Who do I want to think I\u2019m cool?” It can change day to day for me. Today it would be James Baldwin, Amy Butcher, Jesmyn Ward, Toni Morrison, and Eve Ewing. I\u2019m someone who needs models or needs permission, so when I see writers that do shit I didn\u2019t think was possible I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s possible!\u201d Toni Cade Bambara is another that comes to mind.<\/p>\n

The majority of the topics in your writing are considered sensitive within American society. How do you balance the need to be honest, politically correct, respectful, and sufficiently \u201cconfrontational\u201d to challenge your readers’ opinions of themselves, others, and of these issues? What are a few insights you have on writing on topics such as racism, feminism, gender, etc.? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I just want to try to be honest in my rendering of whatever I\u2019m doing, because the truth is elusive. Political correctness as a term is kinda interesting. Toni Cade Bambara invented the notion of political correctness. She said you can\u2019t be a chauvinist and be politically correct at the same time–like, you can\u2019t talk about how black people need to rise, and then be chauvinist. That is not politically correct.\u00a0 We somehow took that to mean if you\u2019re being dishonest you\u2019re not being politically correct. Now what we mean when we say \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d is a way to shut down the margins. I do want to be politically correct, but that to me does not mean beatin\u2019 around the bush like people think; it means I want an honest portrayal of how power works.<\/p>\n

In order for some of your essays to have the most impact it is important to release them in a timely manner–for example, your essays on Trayvon Martin, Stephon Clark, and some of your personal experiences. What is your journalistic process for writing about these time-sensitive topics? Is writing your way of emotionally processing events?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I write every day regardless, so I always have material. I\u2019m thankfully at a point in my career where I don\u2019t have to pitch or propose anymore; people come to me if they want me to write about something. My habit of writing every day makes it so when people do ask me for a piece I can say, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to do it\u201d or \u201cYeah, I\u2019ll do it,\u201d and then see if I have anything that I\u2019ve already written that I want to flesh out. That being said, I still miss deadlines. And when a piece gets turned in, it doesn\u2019t mean the process is over; it means it\u2019s time to collaborate with the editors.<\/p>\n

In your essay \u201cHow They Do in Oxford,\u201d you mention feeling conflicted about whether you had a right to \u201cspeak\u201d for Mississippi and Oxford. It\u2019s been a little while since that essay came out. How have your ideas about this evolved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody has ever asked that question. Let\u2019s just back up and say that the reason I ended up leaving Mississippi was because I got kicked out of school for taking a book out of the library. I knew that if I was going to come back to Mississippi I needed to have something, like some money or a career, because people like me who don\u2019t have those things don\u2019t last long in Mississippi. Mississippi just eats its own. And I never said this out loud, but after living in New York and turning down a job at Berkeley in favor of comin\u2019 home, I was thinking people were going to be praisin\u2019 me for comin\u2019 back, that they would be like, \u201cBruh, thank you!\u201d And I didn\u2019t come back to help anyone. I came back because soulfully I was depleted in New York and I really needed the best of my state. And I needed to be closer to my grandma. But when I got back to Mississippi I would run into people and they\u2019d just be like, \u201cWhat\u2019s up, man?\u201d They didn\u2019t even know I\u2019d left! And that\u2019s the thing, everyone\u2019s lives keep going, not just yours. Like my best friend had a fifteen year old daughter. I should have been more enamored to meet his daughter than he was with my coming back.<\/p>\n

That was when I realized: this state, it\u2019s where I was born, it\u2019s what I write about, but I kinda gotta ease up on that \u201cclaim\u201d to Mississippi, because I literally ran away. I didn\u2019t feel like I could speak for my state because I left for fifteen years. And I definitely still feel that way, now more than ever. Like, a week from today my city, Jackson, is giving me a key to the city, and I feel really weird about that, because there are people who dealt with the same shit I did who did not run away, who stayed, who fought. And when I say “fought” I mean created amazing city initiatives. One of my best friends even became mayor.\u00a0 So I just feel weird now that I am getting some love from my city; I feel like it probably should go to someone else.<\/p>\n

In your essay \u201cWhat I Pledge Allegiance To,\u201d you mention masculinity, both good and bad. In your opinion, what is “good” masculinity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if masculinity is good, but I know that it doesn\u2019t have to be harmful. I want masculinity to be able to hold tenderness, gentleness, and compassion, but we don\u2019t make space for that kind of masculinity, because people attribute that behavior to femininity. I want people to have the imagination to think about how they are impacting others.<\/p>\n

This question is also interesting for me because, growing up around all Black women, I think what people conventionally call masculine and feminine gets thrown on its head. For example, when I was a kid, my friend Shirley and I were hanging out in a ditch, just throwing rocks and shit. I happened to throw a rock when this big semi-truck was driving by, and it broke a window. The dude stopped his big truck and he came up to my grandmama\u2019s door and he was like, \u201cYour kids busted my window.\u201d Now, when my grandmama\u2019s outside of the house, she makes herself very small and meek, but when you confront her on her property you better have a gun, ’cause she\u2019s gonna have a gun. So when he said that and she was like, \u201cHold on, hold on.\u201d She went and got her shit and she said, \u201cWho did what now?\u201d And I knew I did it, I knew I had broken his window, but my grandma was like, \u201cHe did not do that!\u201d while holding her gun. As soon as he left she ran my ass around the house with a switch. So to me that\u2019s feminine, but some of that performance we would attribute to masculinity, so I always get confused. What I do know is that what we call masculinity doesn\u2019t really make room for tenderness or honesty.<\/p>\n

Your grandma seems to be a common source of inspiration in your writing. In your essay \u201cDa Art of Storytellin\u2019\u201d you describe her as having \u201cBlack Southern Woman Magic.\u201d Can you expand on this idea? What does her magic look like? How has this magic influenced you and your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My grandmother was the only person I knew growing up who was good at loving people, and that doesn\u2019t mean she was perfect. She\u2019s not great to herself. She has diabetes, and she\u2019s hell on the care providers I pay for–like, we\u2019ve gone through eight. Part of it is that she grew up taking care of people and cleaning, so she feels like things can never be clean enough. She\u2019ll call me and I\u2019ll be like \u201cHey, grandmama,” and she\u2019ll be like, \u201cYeah, she don\u2019t know how to clean Kie.\u201d She spent her entire life working at the chicken plant. It was different back then, she was the person who had to throw live chickens in boiling water and then she\u2019d slice open the chickens and take the guts out. After work she\u2019d come home and have to clean up white people\u2019s clothes and their houses. Long story short, I\u2019m here in front of y\u2019all today because my grandmama loved me and she\u2019s really good at work. I feel like I\u2019m bad at a lot of things, but I am really good at work, and I try to be good at loving people the way she was.<\/p>\n

We read in your intro to Margaret Walker\u2019s poem \u201cAn Elegiac Valedictory\u201d that your favorite part of Nikki Giovanni\u2019s book Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day <\/em>are the lines,<\/strong><\/p>\n

I strangle my words as easily as I do my tears<\/em>
\nI stifle my screams as frequently as I flash my smile<\/em>
\nIt means nothing<\/em>
\nI am cotton candy on a rainy day<\/em>
\nThe unrealized dream of an idea unborn<\/em>
\n
\nI share with painters the desire<\/em>
\nTo put a three-dimensional picture\u00a0<\/em>
\nOn a one-dimensional surface<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Why were these lines your favorite? What similarities do they share with your own experience of writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love that book and I love that poem, and I love that part of the poem. In tenth grade I loved it because there were particular parts that showed not just who I was, but who we are as people. There were things in that poem that I just didn\u2019t see in other works of art, except for maybe in some hip-hop music. I can\u2019t paint as she describes, but I wanted to be able to write a particular kind of interiority onto the page that keep readers moving, and turning the page. I feel like that\u2019s what Nikki Giovanni does in that piece and in some of her other work. I also think about essay writing and novel writing differently. When I\u2019m writing fiction I\u2019m thinking in images, and if I\u2019m rendering a scene I ask myself, if I could take a picture of this scene, would it make a dull painting? I just wanted to be able to bring to the page those interior parts of myself that I didn\u2019t see rendered in literature. That\u2019s what the Giovanni poem inspired me to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. His Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":2363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scholars-of-sturges"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2362"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}