Rhetorical Analysis

Kiese laymon is a southern writer from Jackson, mississippi and is best known for his work on “ Heavy” , ‘Long division ‘ and ‘How to slowly kill yourself and others in America’. The genre chosen was a memoir. Memoirs are an historical account written from personal knowledge and experiences which is shown as kiese recalls events through his eyes and perspectives and was set in the 1990s,  as there several mentions of Malcom X and the  Rodney king verdict . ‘Heavy’  was published in 2018/2019 by Scribner, a publisher known for distributing pieces to a mass demographic  of readers regardless of age, non fiction and in all formats whether it be audio, video or written formats.

                                       The biggest issues the author speaks about are the pressure onto them by their mother, her colleagues and coach and how his ideals differ from theirs. This is shown initially by his interaction with Ms. Walker , their interaction shows insight into the pressure his mom had placed onto him and how she had spoken about him to her colleagues and shows us the author is still trying to find his own style of writing .This is again seen with the interaction between him and coach Schitzler and their difference in thoughts and perspectives  as the coach had  ridiculed the persona embarrassing them to infront of the class due to kiese’s choice to read “cotton candy on a rainy day” referring to it as “black mess” upsetting kiese as he balled his fists under the table. Coach Schitzler continued to lay into kiese referring to him as “husky malcolm x” and “keece X” .

                                The purpose of this piece was to confess his actions to his mothers to really give her into insight into his mindset and ideas at that point in time and how his ideas differ from her’s this is also why i believe the main demographic of this story is too his mother, throughout this piece the author appears to be speaking direcetly to his mother.This is shown when he speaks about her eating the stolen bread and not questioning it, and he states “ i got out of the car and snatched as many loaves of  wheat bread, white bread, hamburger buns and cinnamon buns , and white bread …..the next morning i served you some of the buttered wheat toast for breakfast in bed. You hugged my neck and told me thank you. You never asked me where the bread came from.”. In this brief excerpt we can see the author using secondary pronouns indicating him speaking directly to her rather than about her and also confesses he stole bread from a grocery store with her car .