Episode 36: Banned Book Review #8: Heavy

Are you doing these critical things to help your child succeed academically? Take the quiz now to find out the important actions you can take to enhance your child's education. Go to my website, liberationthrougheducation.com quiz and take the quiz today. Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with with school administrators and educators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I will review another book from the Banned Book List. This time the title of the book is An American Memoir by Keith Lehman. The intent of this and other monthly book reviews is to examine, to analyze and to investigate why these books were on the banned book list for US K12 public school reading for the 20212022 school year. I'll continue to review these books until I complete the list that you're most interested in and that resonates with you. We only have two more books to go. In this book, the main characters are Kees, who is often referred to as Key, his mother, his grandmother and Malachi Hunter. The setting is in Forest, Mississippi and Jackson, Mississippi in the late 80s, so around 1987. Here's my summary of the book. Key was having a conversation with his grandmother and she explained to him that she is too heavy to blow away or drown in tears made because somebody didn't see her as somebody worth respecting. His grandmother and others taught him indirectly that unacknowledged scars accumulated in battles won often hurt more than battles lost. At 12, Keys weighed 213 pounds. His mother insisted that he become an avid reader and a creative writer. The book is written as if the author is speaking to his mother. In some ways she was very disciplined with him, especially about education and accountability. She spanked him as part of that discipline. She felt that excellence, education and accountability were requirements for keeping the insides of black boys in Mississippi healthy and safe from white folk. She was a single mother struggling to make ends meet while raising her son and working on her dissertation. She reinforced with him to not excuse mediocrity her major in school was political science and she was often used as an expert speaker. From a political scientist perspective. Key was an emotional eater. He hated his body. He now weighed 218 pounds. His mother and grandmother knew and showed him how Black people didn't even have to win for white folk to punish them. All black folk had to do was not lose the way white folk wanted them to. Even though he was fat, when his grandmother took him to church, the older black women flirted with him. And like most fat black boys, when flirted with, he fell in love. He played basketball at St. Richard Catholic School when he was in the eighth grade. At this time he weighed 231 pounds. His mother finished her doctoral degree and had a one year postdoctoral appointment at the University of Maryland at College park. She and Ke now lived in Maryland. He's 15 years old. When he went to the doctor before leaving Maryland, he was 6ft 1 and 208 pounds. He also had a heart murmur. He hadn't been back in Mississippi for longer than a week when he had gained seven pounds. He now attended St. Joseph High School and played on the varsity basketball team. His first kiss was with a girl named Abby Claremont, who was a white girl. She was also the first girl he had sex with. He was 16 years old. The only other girl at his school who asked to even be friends with him in a sort of intimate way was Kamala Lackey, who was a Jr. At St. Joseph. He didn't tell his mother about his relationship with Abby because she would think of him as a sellout, just like his friend La Thon did. Keith described himself as a liar, a cheater, a manipulator, a fat, happy, sad, bald headed black boy with a heart murmur. He was also aware of sexual abuse that was perpetrated on girls by boys his age, as well as physical abuse which his mother experienced at the hands of one of her boyfriends, Malachi Hunter. Malachi was a black radical who was all about supporting the black cause. Although he tended to have abusive relationships with black women, he loved black people and he loved preaching about what black people were doing wrong. In his mind, Malachi believed that what they were ultimately always doing wrong was not doing what he would do. In his senior year at age 17, Key was 6 1, 230 pounds. He was also a writer of editorials for the school paper. When he graduated from high school, he decided to go to Millsaps College, which was a private school. His mother had been awarded another postdoc, this time at Harvard University for the Entire academic year. He was 18 years old and weighed 242 pounds. His mother would spend the year in Boston and he would stay in Mississippi attending Millsaps. After three months at college, he weighed himself during Christmas break and he had gained over 50 pounds. He now weighed 293 pounds. Throughout the story, Keith seemed angry at his mother for whatever reason and acted out toward her by overeating, lying, fighting and other disruptive behaviors. Maybe he thought that she spanked him too much. In any case, there was an interesting dynamic going on between he and his mother. The last spanking that his mother gave him was was when she saw his first semester report card from Millsaps. However, at that time he snatched the belt from her hand and threw it against the bookcase. He was no longer afraid of her and she was basically afraid of him. Something snapped in him. After reading books by James Baldwin, Richard Wright and others. One sentence from an essay in Nobody Knows My Name really hit home for him. That sentence was, any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity. The end of safety. He began exercising, doing 300 push ups a day and 300 sit ups per day. He started running at night. He stopped eating red meat, then pork, then chicken, then then fish. And he stopped eating eggs, then bread, then anything with refined sugar. He began the summer weighing 309 pounds. And by the end of summer he weighed 225 pounds. He kept running and eating until he got down to 218 pounds. The smallest he had been since seventh grade. Heavy was yesterday. Key wrote a number of satirical essays while at college, and because of the reactions and backlash on his last editorial, editorial essay for the newspaper, he was kicked out of Millsaps. He was put on disciplinary probation for fighting and kicked out of the college for theft. He felt waves of shame that made him not want to be alive. He seemed to have made educating white folks about black folks and Millsap his homework. He's fallen in love with provoking white folk, which really meant falling in love with begging white folk to free black folk by demanding that they radically love themselves more. He ended up enrolling at Jackson State, the same college where his mother taught. He started working at Grace House, which was a facility where black men who were HIV positive resided. This didn't sit well with his girlfriend Nizola or his mother, but he worked there anyway. He was accepted as a transfer student to Overland College. At this point, Key weighed 190 pounds. He went on to get a Mellon Undergraduate Fellowship and applied to get an MFA and PhD at Indiana University. At this point, he was 26 years old and weighed 183 pounds. He loved losing weight. This obsession was based on the fact that he wanted to be in control of how fat he looked and felt. Keith started teaching as a young black professor, the youngest professor at the college at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. His mother told him to learn from his mistakes and understand the pain that awaited any worker in this country who made a home of their job. For teaching at Vassar, he would receive a monthly check, some semblance of security and moral certainty that he was helping white folk be better at being human. He said that this was new to him, but it was an old black work. And this old black work and ways his mother warned him about was more than selling out. This old black work was morally side hustling, backward. Key now weighed 165 pounds. During the past six years, when he was in graduate school and teaching at Vassar, his mother worked in over 15 countries, all the while still being a full time professor and associate dean. Although his mother was paid twice as much money as he did, she always seemed to need to ask him for money for various projects like broken furnaces and busted plumbing, for his grandmother's dental bills, for medical prescriptions and other needs. He kept pushing himself to keep running long distances and to eat less. He weighed 159 pounds. He began to have aches, pains and tingling in his right leg. He sat on the floor in his small apartment knowing that his body was broken because he carried and created secrets and that were way too heavy. It turned out that he had herniated disc sciatica, massive scar tissue in his left ankle and knee, as well as abnormal cell growth that contributed to the deterioration of his left hip socket. The doctor recommended that he stay off his leg for at least three to four months and that he needed surgery. Instead of going to the required appointments for for the procedures and therapy, he gorged himself for weeks until he was £206. The exact number of his weight became an emotional, psychological and spiritual destination. And this occurred a long time ago. Controlling the number on the scale more than writing a story or an essay or feeling loved or making money or having sex made him feel less gross. And most abundant, losing weight helped him forget. His mother has now quit her job at Jackson State and is living in Connecticut. She frequents the casinos there often, just as she had in Mississippi. She was a gambler with an addiction. Key ended up visiting the casinos in Connecticut as often as his mother, and he became a gambling addict. Also. He couldn't run, but he could gamble. Toward the end of the book, when Kee is 43 years old, heavy and childless, he remembers the places, the swimming pools, the rooms, his grandmother, his friends as he reminisces about his career, his writing and growing up in Mississippi. He wrote this book to his mother because even though they had harmed each other, as American parents and children tend to do, she did everything that she could to make sure that the nation and the state of Mississippi did not harm their most vulnerable children. Because he loved teaching and guiding the black students in and out of his classes, he accepts that black children will not recover from economic inequality, housing discrimination, sexual violence, hetero patriarchy, mass incarceration, mass evictions and parental abuse. He also accepts that black children are all worthy of the most abundant, patient, responsible kind of love and liberation that this world has ever created. Here are my overall impressions this book has a number of accolades. It was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, by Publishers Weekly, npr, broadly buzzfeed in the nonfiction category the Undefeated Library Journal as part of the Biography Memoirs Source the Washington Post in the nonfiction section, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times Critics the book tackles a different topic than the last few book reviews from the Banned Book List. The focus of this book is more about the experiences of the author growing up in Mississippi and his complex relationship with his mother. As a memoir, it describes his internal struggles with trying to make sense of the things that he saw, felt and heard. Heavy was not only about carrying around excess physical weight, but it was also about the heaviness of carrying around the weight of secrets and lies. Keith would learn 15 years too late that asking for consent, granting consent, surviving sexual violence, being called a good dude and never initiating sexual relationships did not incubate him from being emotionally abusive. He realized and accepted that he'd actually never been honest in any relationship in his life and has never been honest with himself about what carrying decades of lies did to other people's hearts and heads. He even stopped talking to his mother for a while because he did not know how to say no and everything he said yes to was a lie. He ends the book by saying that he wrote it to his mother and was just trying to put her where he bends. The book did delve into topics of sexual abuse, addiction, emotional abuse, physical abuse and racism as expressed through the eyes of a young man growing up in the South Many of the scenes that he described in the book could be uncomfortable for some, and this is probably the reason why it was placed on the banned book list. He brought his experiences to life vividly expressing conversations with friends, girlfriends, and family. It provided the reader an insight into the mental anguish of being raised by a mother, especially the type of mother that his was, and the reasons that he sought food as comfort. The author raised the profile of overweight people and what they had to deal with within themselves, as well as remarks from those outside of themselves, including family, all of which can be hurtful. He offered encouragement for those who have had one door closed and the importance of persistence in order to see your goals and dreams accomplished. I think this book is one that would be of interest to young adults as well as older adults for the mere fact of the topics that he exposes. It is certainly relevant for those struggling with weight issues and is relatable to those who were raised in the South. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a comment, a rating, or a review and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have an urgent question about a current situation or issue with you or your child's school, or a specific topic that you'd like to for me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email at kimliberation through education.com to let me know what your question is. Anyone whose question is selected to be discussed on one podcast episode will receive a 25Amazon gift card. You can also connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using the handle kimjfields. Until next time Time. Aim to learn something new every day. Love my show. Consider being a regular subscriber. You can subscribe for as little as $3 per month. Just go to tinyurl.com podcast support. There's no contractual obligation. You can cancel at any time. If you choose to subscribe, I'll give you a special shout out thanking you in an upcoming episode. Remember, that's forward/tinyurl.com forward/podcast support to subscribe.