Yeah, he has a premise of what it's like, but then he sees all these things that aren't what he imagined at all. KIESE LAYMON: Like so when City goes back, he looks at 1964. It’s a dangerous proposition for a Black kid in the south. It tells the story of City, a Black kid in Mississippi who discovers a hole in the ground that can transport him through time. In this episode, author Kiese Laymon talks about his fantastical novel Long Division. Welcome back to Fireside with Blair Hodges.

KIESE LAYMON: Well, so then I'm gonna get upset, and I'm gonna try to create some art that a newer version of me in the future can actually enjoy.īLAIR HODGES: And now he’s chair of English at the University of Mississippi, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.

KIESE LAYMON: How come nobody that you're making me read looks like me, comes from where I come from, or talks like I'm from? And you're like, “Well, because those people don't create classics!”īLAIR HODGES: That did not go over well with Kiese Laymon. I'm not doing it! You know? I don't care what you tell me!īLAIR HODGES: And then at school, with that bowtie crumpled up and hidden away in his backpack, he had a lot of questions about the books they had to read. I'm a little fat kid! Bow ties make me sweat. KIESE LAYMON: So like, when my grandmother would tell me and my mother would be like, you need to pretty much look like, you know, Malcolm X when you go to school every day with a bow tie and all of that, I'm like, I don't want to wear a bow tie. And he says there was a ton of cultural pressure on him just to be excellent at everything. I think we're all time travelers.īLAIR HODGES: Back in the 1980s, Kiese Laymon was a hard-headed Black kid growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. KIESE LAYMON: I believe artists are time travelers.

Kiese recommended The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr. Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon. Laymon also founded “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program aimed at getting Mississippi kids and their parents more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing. He’s also the award-winning author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. McAlexander Chair and Professor of English the University of Mississippi. KIESE LAYMON, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, is the Hubert H.

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