How to Kill Yourself and Others in America

Summary:

A revised edition, with six new essays and seven original essays, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful” (NPR).

Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential reading. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these thirteen insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language and his artful rendering of experience, trumpeting why he is “simply one of the most talented writers in America” (New York magazine).

Praise for How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America:
“I first encountered Kiese Laymon’s writing when I read How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. I was stunned into stillness.” —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist