





































Food within literature often presents itself through the 

multifaceted lens of the intersectionality of culture, 

gender, class, and race. Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy 

is not exempt from this intersectionality as Laymon 

presents food as an outlet for the struggle that the Black 

women in his life face as they are forced to fit into gen-

dered expectations through the gaze of not only men 

but of America and white power structures. Within 

Heavy, Kiese Laymon presents both the implicit gener-

ational and explicit current trauma that African Amer-

ican women endure through the consumption of their 

bodies by America, their use of food as ownership, and 

the role that food insecurity plays in ensuing actions. 

This essay applies triple consciousness to the trauma of 

these women as Black women in America as they inter-

nalize the gaze of white people in America and aims 

to shift abusive blame from Black communities back to 

the white institutions which use these Black commu-

nities for consumption. This is evident through analyz-

ing the rape of Laymon’s childhood friend, his grand-

mother’s submission to white power structures but her 

strength in the kitchen, and Laymon’s mother’s abusive 

tendencies toward him which follow her food insecuri-

ties. This essay will delve into how throughout Heavy, 

Laymon illustrates how food functions in the lives of 

Black women in American societies and the unhealthy 

habits that are formed in order to confront both this ex-

plicit and implicit trauma, and the increasing relevancy 

to shift the blame of these unhealthy habits from Black 

communities back to the white power structures which 

enforced them in the first place. 

Redirecting the Blame: 
America’s Overconsumption of Black Women as 

Illustrated in Kiese Laymon’s Heavy

Kaila Henkin, Ball State University

Essay

Introduction
 Generational trauma—which was, and 
still is, evoked by white people—is prominent 
in the Black community today and often pres-
ents itself in a harsher manner both within Black 
women and as a consequence of how Black 
women are treated as consumable beings. This 
generational trauma stems from being enslaved 
by white people, to segregation, to societal rac-
ism, and can manifest itself within Black folx in 
multiple fashions. In Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An 
American Memoir (2018), an autobiographical 
narrative about a heavyset Black man’s experi-
ences with personal trauma and struggles with 
food, this generational trauma manifests in how 
the Black women in Laymon’s life are treated 
as sexual objects. In Laymon’s memoir, Black 
women respond to their hardships through their 
interactions with food as a tool to negotiate the 
implicit and explicit trauma they endure; at the 
same time, Laymon compares Black women’s 
exploitative treatment to the indulgence of food 
being devoured throughout the narrative. By de-
lineating generational trauma through the Black 
women in his life, Laymon affirms the conse-
quences of white institutions abusing Black folx 
through overindulgence, and how that carries 
into the lives of Black women and their actions 
as a result. To further this conversation in a pres-
ent-day context, it is also relevant to analyze the 
Black Lives Matter movement in relation to the 
protests, riots, and the deaths of Black women 
specifically as consequences of white power

Henkin | 38



within institutions such as the police force and within politics, evincing a pattern of abuse and overcon-

sumption of Black women with a lack of remorse or justice.

 This essay will explore how Laymon’s Heavy is an indictment of dominant white power structures 

and the lack of acknowledgement of the impact that these structures have on Black women, in particular, 

as they see themselves not only through the white American gaze but also the male gaze—a theoretical 

framework referred to as “triple consciousness.” Moreover, Laymon’s memoir shifts the blame from the 

Black community’s actions to expose the ways in which white power structures built the grounds for these 

actions to begin with, reflecting the trend of food and consumption as the polarity of comfort and grief in 

the discussion of generational trauma within Black women.

 To analyze this through the lens of triple consciousness, I will interpret where both the white and 

male gaze is evident within characters in Heavy, including Laymon’s childhood friend Layla, who is sex-

ually assaulted through the means of overconsumption but then neglected in the beginning of the novel; 

Laymon’s grandmother and her negotiation of the white gaze and tendency to serve others while creat-

ing a safe space of food for herself and her family; and Laymon’s mother through her abusive tendencies 

and food insecurities. Moreover, the essay includes research on the impact that generational trauma, as 

caused by white people, has on Black women. These interpretations and extensive research will allow for 

further understanding of the disregarded consequences that are derived from the power that white institu-

tions hold, along with the harm of focusing the blame on the Black community rather than on the white 

structures which allow Black women to become the scapegoat for their own victimization.

Understanding Triple Consciousness

 To begin to understand the trauma—both generational and present—that the Black women in 

Laymon’s Heavy encounter and react to, we must first take a step back to understand what generational/

cultural trauma and collective memory is through the lens of triple consciousness. In his book Cultural 

Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2008), Ron Eyerman explained that:

 

 [T]rauma is mediated through various forms of representation and linked to the reformation of   

 collective identity and the reworking of collective memory. … In this sense, slavery was traumatic  

 in retrospect, and formed a ‘primal scene’ which could, potentially, unite all ‘African Americans’   

 in the United States, whether or not they themselves had been slaves or had any knowledge of or   

 feeling of Africa. Slavery formed the root of an emergent collective identity through an equally   

 emergent collective memory, one that signified and distinguished a race. (1)

 The concept of collective memory and trauma being present in the Black community in Ameri-

ca was caused by and perpetuated by the white population through continued racism and the enforce-

ment of stereotypes. This collective and generational trauma is the foundation for both double and triple 

consciousness, where Black women are traumatized to view themselves through the gaze of Blackness, 

America, and womanhood. In some cases, including in Heavy, such experiences may influence their rela-

tionship to food.

 The theoretical origin of this framework is double consciousness, a term coined by W.E.B Du Bois,

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39 | Henkin



which explains how Black men in particular are prone to looking at themselves through the white Amer-

ican gaze, rather being allowed to develop a true self-consciousness. This white gaze is internalized due 

to generational trauma that Black folx tend to suffer because of their ancestral history, consisting of en-

slavement, dehumanization, segregation, police brutality, and more, along with the repercussions of this 

consistent racism and the promised reparations that have yet to be made. As Du Bois wrote in The Souls 

of Black Folk:

 The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this 

 American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see 

 himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-con 

 sciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one  

 by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity… The history of the American  

 Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his  

 double self into a better and truer self. (23)

 Triple consciousness takes Du Bois’s theoretical framework one step further by including the 

gaze of womanhood which Black women have been held against and hold against themselves, as they 

are consistently consumed (not unlike food) by dominant power structures. According to scholar Na-

hum Welang’s “Triple Consciousness: The Reimagination of Black Female Identities in Contemporary 

American Culture” (2018), “[B]lack women view themselves through three lenses and not two: America, 

blackness and womanhood” (296). Black women are forced to see themselves not just as Black women 

but through “the perceptions of the white world” (Welang 297) and the generational trauma that they 

are faced with, along with the gendered stereotypes that are derived from these perceptions. In other 

words, triple consciousness acknowledges the impact that both “blackness” and “Americanness” hold on 

women specifically—recognizing that Black hypermasculinity targets Black women while white hyper-

masculinity targets the generalized Black community in general. Therefore, Black women are subject to 

the “womanhood” lens, which consists of gendered expectations, a lack of respect, and the normalized 

and accepted (over)consumption of their bodies by both male and white communities. Triple conscious-

ness is evident through the Black women in Laymon’s Heavy and how they are influenced by the power 

structures which oppress them and attempt to define their roles as women in Black communities.

Black Women Strength Trope

 As Laymon’s memoir also indicates, issues ranging from physical abuse to food insecurities de-

rived from the influence of white structures are normalized within Black communities and Black women 

especially experience the repercussion of historical and present racial and sexual abuse and trauma. 

In Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the Nineteenth Century (2012), Kyla Tompkins argues that “The 

image of the black body as an edible object is a strong and consistent trope… black bodies and subjects 

in these encounters fight back, and bite back… in novels produced by black authors” (8). Not only is 

the Black body seen as edible to the white eye, such as Tompkins argues, but also by applying the triple 

consciousness lens, I contend that the bodies of Black women, in particular, are appetizing to both the

Essay

Henkin | 40



white gaze and male gazes. In Laymon’s Heavy, these women “fight back, and bite back” through defy-

ing weakness and simulating perfection and strength, which is made evident through their actions and 

involvement with food in their lives. This normalization of the consumption of Black women can be seen 

through Laymon’s childhood friend Layla, his mother, and his grandmother, and how they respond to the 

undue societal expectations to which they are held.

 Each of these women face their own trauma—both generational and present—throughout their 

lives and are greatly influenced by triple consciousness, causing them to act out in various ways but 

with one common factor: fitting into the persona of a strong Black woman. Regardless of their particular 

traumas, they are forced to fight against the unwanted overindulgence of their own bodies. According to 

Roxanne Donovan and Lindsey West’s study “Stress and Mental Health: Moderating Role of the Strong 

Black Woman Stereotype” (2015):

 [The Strong Black Woman] is perceived as naturally resilient, able to handle with ease all the   

 stress, upset, and trauma life throws at her. . . . During slavery, internalization of these traits was   

 likely necessary for personal, familial, and community survival. Today, Black women no 

 longer have to contend with institutionalized chattel slavery, but they do have to contend with   

 such significant intersectional stressors as racialized sexism and gendered racism. (386)

 To further contextualize this stereotype through the lens of triple consciousness, the strong Black 

woman is a trope derived from the need that Black women have to present themselves as secure in order 

to stray from humility, as pending from both the looming racism from white power structures and the 

sexism from hypermasculinity—both lenses that Black women tend to view themselves through. As I ar-

gue, these pressures to be strong bear down on Laymon’s friend Layla, his grandmother, and his mother, 

influencing their interactions with food.

Black Lives Matter Protests in 2020

 The fact that Black women are forced to portray themselves as having a specifically strong “char-

acter” to provide protection for themselves is not a new subject of debate; however, while this conversa-

tion is not new, there is still a lack of acknowledgement of the consumption of Black women due to the 

dominant tendency to view Black women as something to devour and ingest—a view originating with 

white power structures during the long centuries of chattel slavery. This remains evident today through 

the recent 2020 spark of protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement which were provoked 

by the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officers and protests that were spurred on by the 

continued killings of Black folx, and how white institutions taught us to fight for the lives of men but 

disregard the health of Black women.

 These murders of Black folx were committed by, and as a result of, white power structures which 

influence communities to act and respond in a certain manner, including “Protesters [who] burned a 

police precinct in Minneapolis, torched cop cars in Los Angeles and Atlanta, and dodged plumes of tear 

gas” (Altman). Moreover, “By June 2, the National Guard had been activated in at least 28 states, and 

dozens of cities had imposed curfews to quell looting, arson and spasms of violence,” as Alex Altman

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41 | Henkin



recalled in his Time article “Why the Killing of George Floyd Sparked an Uprising” (2020). Instead of 

asking how the Black Lives Matter protestors could destroy property, steal from big name brand compa-

nies, and protest in the middle of a pandemic, which consequently shifts the blame to the Black com-

munity, this blame needs to be redirected to the white power structures that have suppressed the Black 

community for centuries by instead asking the question of why the Black Lives Matter protestors have 

responded in such numbers and actions.

 While this recent series of BLM protests happened in response to the unjust murder of George 

Floyd on May 25, 2020, the mention of Black women such as Breonna Taylor, an innocent woman killed 

in her sleep by a no-warrant home invasion by police officers, has been significantly less valued along 

with a lack of justice due to America failing Black women in addressing their pain and instead continu-

ing to consume their bodies as if they were edible. This is evident not only through the fact that Taylor’s 

murder happened on March 13, 2020 (Booker), two months before Floyd’s, which is what caused the 

series of protests, but through how the media consumed Taylor’s body as a Black woman in response. 

Taylor became a popularized image in the media, as seen on the covers of Vanity Fair and The Oprah 

Magazine, as America continued to overindulge in her body post-mortem and use her picture to attract 

buyers yet stay static about taking any action to bring Taylor any justice.

 This standardization of the overindulgence of Black women is explicitly stated when Laymon 

writes in Heavy that “I was taught by big boys who were taught by big boys who were taught by big boys 

that Black girls what be okay no matter what we did to them” (16)—a philosophy passed down not only 

between Black boys but also one that stems from when Black people were still enslaved and Black wom-

en were owned and sexually abused by white men without consequence.

Black Women as Sexual Consumption in Heavy

 Throughout Laymon’s Heavy, the pattern of justified sexual abuse and using Black women as a 

means for overindulgence through the act of sex is prevalent and emphasizes the indictment of domi-

nant white power structures and the impact of triple consciousness on Black women’s experiences. The 

consumption of Black women within Heavy is most notable with the introduction of Laymon’s child-

hood friend and crush Layla, and how the “big boys” in Laymon’s life would sexually abuse her. Laymon 

remembered that “Layla had to go in Daryl’s room with all the big boys for fifteen minutes if she want-

ed to float in the deep end. . . . I assumed some kind of sex was happening” (18), and that afterward “I 

knew that the big boys would tell stories about what happened in Daryl’s room that were good for all 

three of them and sad for [Layla] in three vastly different ways” (21). The “big boys” consumed Layla’s 

body without consequence, abusing her in the overindulgence of sex, satisfying their own appetites and 

allowing her to reap the small benefit of swimming in the deep end of the pool. Just as the Black Lives 

Matter protests in 2020 brought fleeting attention to Breonna Taylor and the media’s exploitation of her 

body without any serious act for justice and therefore without consequences for the consumption of 

Taylor’s image, thereby perpetuating generational trauma and the experience of triple consciousness, the 

“big boys” in Laymon’s Heavy sexually consumed Layla’s body and left her with nothing but trauma and 

minimum gain through the swimming pool deal.

 This scene, along with Laymon’s own acknowledgement of Layla’s rape yet his refusal to try to

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Henkin | 42



stop it, relays how Black women—and girls—are treated and seen as succulent beings in the Black com-

munity, especially by Black men, as influenced by systems controlled by white people. In “Black Women 

and Girls & #MeToo” (2020), Jennifer Gómez and Robyn Gobin explain that “Black women and girls’ 

experiences of intra-racial sexual assault . . . [are] impacted by racial trauma, sexism, cultural betray-

al, and (intra)cultural pressure. . . . Consequently, addressing racial trauma has implications for healing 

from cultural betrayal trauma as well” (12). Accordingly, when Black women are abused by someone 

within their own community, such as Layla was in Heavy, this behavior creates not only physical but 

also emotional scars that tear Black women away from their people, creating a further division and 

increasing the blame of the Black community, even though this abuse and thought process originated 

from white power due to the fact that Black women view themselves through the trifecta gazes of white 

America, Blackness, and womanhood. 

 The lack of recognition for Black women and girls who have been raped force these women to act 

accordingly, as if they were unaffected. In “Revealing a Hidden Curriculum of Black Women’s Erasure in 

Sexual Violence Prevention Policy” (2017), Sara Wooten furthers this idea by stating, “Ultimately, Black 

women are the antithesis of the ideal rape victim due to centuries of racist and sexist ideology aimed at 

protecting white supremacy” (409). To elaborate, it is not just that Black women are not the “ideal rape 

victim” due to white supremacy, it is also that Black women are not seen as victims at all when it comes 

to sexual abuse. Instead, their bodies are seen as meant for men to consume without consequence, as 

Laymon exhibits with his unwillingness to act when Layla is being gang raped in the next room. The im-

plication is that Black women and girls are not actually seen as women and girls but instead as objects 

for consumption and food to be devoured by America, as can be currently seen through Taylor’s face on 

the cover of magazines as a form of pathos but no perceived legal amends for her or her loved ones.

 As a response to her sexual abuse by the three boys, Layla puts up the “strong Black woman” 

front in the face of Laymon and the boys waiting in the pool. This trope that Layla exhibits, as previ-

ously discussed, is a way for Black women to mask their true emotions in order to present themselves 

as unconsumable, even after being consumed, as constructed by a systemically white America and the 

triple consciousness that Black women tend to see themselves through. However, by portraying herself 

as a strong figure who “was all-world at dissing” (Laymon 16), Layla further performs the idea that Black 

women and girls don’t need help and cannot be bothered, and therefore don’t deserve justice—similar 

to how the Black women consumed, raped, and/or murdered by white power structures are often not 

given justice or even entirely fought for by movements such as the Black Lives Matter protests, not only 

in 2020 with Breonna Taylor, but throughout American history. Indeed, the strong Black woman front is 

problematic because it normalizes the overconsumption and overindulgence of Black women and their 

bodies, both sexually and not, as evident not only through Layla in Laymon’s narrative but with many 

Black woman today.

Food as an Outlet in Heavy

Another woman within Laymon’s Heavy who is constantly consumed by both the white, male, and 

American gazes is Laymon’s grandmother, who teaches him the importance of home, food, and the 

struggles of racial inequality. His grandmother worked at the chicken plant, sold a variety of food, and

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43 | Henkin



worked as a domestic laborer for the white Mumford family (Laymon 49). In one scene, she takes Lay-

mon to the Mumford’s house with her, and Laymon is offended by the privilege of the white family and 

his grandmother’s servitude toward them; in response, his grandmother talks to him in the kitchen when 

they return home—a place of solace, and as she describes, “she spent so many hours in white-folk kitch-

ens and just wanted her children to respect her kitchen when she got home” (Laymon 57). To Laymon’s 

grandmother, the kitchen was sacred because she was working for herself and no one else, as she exhib-

ited the “strong Black woman” trope that is consistent within the Black women throughout the narrative. 

Behind this is a history of Black women working in kitchens as servants. As, Kimberly Nettles-Barcelón, 

et al. write in “Black Women’s Food Work as Critical Space” (2015), “Black women are not seen as 

authorities in the kitchen or elsewhere in matters of food—culturally, politically, and socially. . . . She 

is rendered absent, and made invisible by the continued salience of intersecting vectors of disempower-

ment: race/gender/class/sexuality” (35). Historically, Black women were not accepted within the produc-

tion nor consumption of food, so for Laymon’s grandmother, her kitchen is a symbol of strength in the 

face of adversity and independence in the face of triple consciousness.

 Since Laymon’s grandmother experiences America’s gaze, the Black community’s gaze, and the 

gaze of womanhood, she fights their expectations by creating a safe place within her kitchen for her-

self and her family, outside of any of these gazes. The “strong Black woman” trope is also evident in 

Laymon’s grandmother’s self-efficiency within her food habits, including growing vegetables in her own 

garden because she likes to know the process the food that she is consuming has gone through (Lay-

mon 59). Laymon notes that, because of this, he would tend to eat more healthily with his grandmother, 

even though she is a heavier woman, which defies the food insecurity which Black communities often 

suffer from due to white power structures oppressing Black folx to the point of food scarcity and a lack 

of access to a variety of healthy food. Moreover, Laymon’s grandmother’s strength—unlike Layla’s which 

was derived from intrapersonal trauma through sexual abuse between her Black peers—has developed 

from a need to protect herself from the abuse of the white families to which she has been in service. Her 

strength is a defense mechanism to ensure that they cannot “get” to her—therefore consuming her body 

as a result—and accuse her of an action such as stealing food, as Laymon had wanted to when he visited 

the Mumford’s house.

 While Laymon’s grandmother actively works against holding a defiant attitude toward the white 

families that she has worked for, she is still allowing their white American power to affect her and her 

mindset such as it does through triple consciousness. She relays that “It ain’t about making white folk 

feel what you feel. . . . it’s about not feeling what they want you to feel” (Laymon 56). She reveals the 

impact that the white gaze holds on her life by adamantly thinking in a way that defies the expectations 

that she is held to as a Black woman by the white communities around her. Laymon’s grandmother is 

heavily influenced by triple consciousness, but she also recognizes the cause and effect that white peo-

ple tend to have on the Black community, so she attempts to stray from stereotypical manners—stealing 

from white people, lying to white people, etc.—that would allow the white people to consume her even 

further and place the blame on the Black communities that they are hungering for.

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Abusive Tendencies as a Result of White Hunger

 This white hunger for Black blame is satisfied when the Black community responds to their gener-

ational trauma in negative fashions, in turn passing down white hate, supremacy, and power to influence 

their families and allow them to be consumed by white influence. Within Heavy, this hunger is satisfied 

through his mother as the memoir follows her trends of food insecurity and abusive impulses as derived 

from white institutions and triple consciousness. Within the memoir, Laymon’s mother is yet another 

Black woman who presents herself as a strong, no-nonsense, professional, and educated woman in order 

to defy any negative feedback from the white community which could deter her professional career. 

 With these publicly secure qualities, Laymon’s mother hides her insecurities through the abuse 

of her son: insecurities including a lack of consistent, nutritional food for herself and her son, and her 

fear of white power systems affecting her, and her son’s, lives. These insecurities, as derived from white 

supremacy and therefore triple consciousness, lead to abusive tendencies—both physical and emotion-

al—that Laymon’s mother felt were necessary in order to teach Laymon about the harm that white power 

systems could impose upon his livelihood if she weren’t there to punish him first. Laymon’s mother inad-

vertently consumes her own son through the influence of white power structures and the hold that they 

have on her life by abusing him into submission toward both her and the food present in his life.

 Unlike Laymon’s grandmother who grew her own vegetables which gave Laymon access to 

healthy food options growing up, Laymon’s mother, throughout the Heavy narrative, struggled with 

supplying Laymon with those same nutrients and was therefore associated with unhealthy foods, rang-

ing from Laymon binge-eating Pop Tarts late at night (Laymon 13) to him stealing an obscene amount of 

bread which his mother never questioned (Laymon 108). Laymon’s mother’s food insecurities only fur-

ther motivated her to act out the strong Black woman trope and her abusive tendencies; she focused on 

the womanhood gaze as included in triple consciousness, which caused her to abuse Laymon as a result 

of her role as a food insecure mother protecting her son, not only against her own food insecurities, but 

against the white power structures which devoured their Black community, and many other Black com-

munities, into submission.

 Laymon’s mother would physically abuse her son—once over Laymon dating a white girl, hitting 

him and relaying the dangers of such a relationship (Laymon 97) and once over poor grades, going “on 

and on about ruining the only chance [Laymon] had of getting free” (Laymon 138)—in order to show 

Laymon what white people and institutions would do to consume his body if he didn’t learn his lesson 

now through his mother. The physical act of beating her son suggests how influenced Laymon’s mother 

was by triple consciousness and the white gaze and how it controlled her life, leading her to commit 

abusive acts which shifted the blame from those white institutions to herself as a Black woman. Through-

out Heavy, Laymon refutes that placement of blame by not only illustrating his mother’s actions but the 

reason behind them, therefore redirecting the blame back to white supremacy and the racist systems that 

are still in existence today.

 Along with physical abuse, Laymon’s mother mentally abused him about his weight as a result of 

her food insecurity. The mention of weight is consistent throughout Heavy, but Laymon’s mother viewed 

it as another excuse for white people to devour the Black community without consequence and with 

justified reason. Within the text, after Laymon lost weight and went on daily and nightly runs, his mother

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45 | Henkin



addressed his concerns about being shot by police:

 

 “How is running at night increasing my chances of getting shot?”

 “Please. You are a big Black man,” [she] said. “Stop running at night.” I asked [her] if [she] still  

 thought I was big even though I had hardly any body fat. “To white folk and police, you will al 

 ways be huge no matter how skinny you are.” (Laymon 201)

 Laymon’s mother’s actions and abusive tendencies were a direct result of the trauma that has 

been inflicted upon her throughout her life by white people as an independent Black woman, causing 

her to react in fear and anger. Laymon’s mother’s food insecurities and her inability to view her son as 

anything but “big” or “heavy” are abuses influenced by triple consciousness and her inability to fathom 

herself or her son outside of the white and American gaze, and herself through the womanhood gaze 

as a single mother raising her son under the influences of white power structures. According to Wendy 

Ashley’s “The Angry Black Woman: The Impact of Pejorative Stereotypes on Psychotherapy with Black 

Women” (2014), “Many characteristics of the angry Black woman stereotype, including hostility, rage, 

aggressiveness, and bitterness may be reflective of survival skills developed by Black women in the face 

of social, economic, and political oppression. This trifecta of oppression is all encompassing and cre-

ates a pervasive environment of injustice” (29). In addition to the “strong Black woman” trope, Laymon’s 

mother also negotiates the “angry Black women stereotype” in response to the constant humiliation of 

being a Black woman as seen by Americanness, Blackness, and womanhood.

 In his review “What We Hoped to Forget: The Weight and Power of Kiese Laymon’s Heavy” 

(2019), Bijan Stephen notes that “His mother hurt him as well, beating him when she thought he was out 

of line, while insisting to Laymon that it was for his own good. . . . Even when he was a college student, 

his mother continued to police his behavior, worried as she was about how the white world might harm 

her son.” Through the repercussions of generational trauma and the consequences of viewing her life, 

and her son’s life, through the white gaze in America, Laymon’s mother harmed her son for fear of how 

others would harm him outside of her own control. Put another way, she was consumed by America as 

she acted out in abusive tendencies, not unlike white institutions expect Black women to in order to 

place the blame on Black communities rather than on themselves.

 This fear, as maintained by white power systems, is continuously perpetuated by the consistency 

of white supremacy, from before Laymon’s mother was alive to after Heavy was published—a fear which 

creates a chain reaction within the Black community and places blame on its members for being trained 

in the mindset of pleasing the existing white institutions. Laymon elaborates on this fear in an interview 

with Abigail Bereola titled “A Reckoning is Different Than a Tell-All” (2018):

 [T]his anxiety about white folks and what they would do if given opportunity was always around  

 us. . . . I think sometimes it can inadvertently make white folks into the traffic cops of your life. .  

 . .  I think it makes it harder for us to imagine because we’re literally told that if we imagine 

 out of the box, white people are gon’ get us. And so when I bring that shit up in the book, I’m  

 not trying to indict my grandmom, my mama, and them, because I understand. They’re trying to  

 protect themselves and protect their child and their grandchild.

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Henkin | 46



 Laymon recognizes this fear of white power structures within himself and within the influential 

Black women in his life, pointedly saying that they are only trying to protect their children before white 

institutions can harm them. To further this, I argue that Laymon is relaying in Heavy that these Black 

women in his life are not at fault for fearing white supremacy and acting out in ways that are harm-

ful—such as his mother abusing him. It is instead these white institutions and systems that are held in 

such high regard that are at fault and are to blame for the destruction of Black communities, specifically 

across America, as these white power structures continue to overconsume and indulge in the oppression 

and destruction of Black communities as they stand.

 The destructive consumption and exploitation of Black communities by white institutions was 

further proved during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 when police officers continued to harm 

Black bodies in public but rarely with consequence. This lack of consequence further implies the lack of 

care for Black folx and how their bodies are only feasted on by America, the white gaze on Black folx, 

and, for Black women, hypermasculinity. As a result, the narrative of the blame of destruction during the 

2020 Black Lives Matter protests was further bestowed upon the Black community rather than the white 

power structures which instigated the destruction in the first place.

Conclusion

 Throughout Heavy (2018), Kiese Laymon shifts the blame of abuse, insecurities, and negligence 

from the Black community and projects it onto the white power systems which have upheld the grounds 

for these negative actions for centuries. Through the strong characteristics of the Black women in his life, 

including Layla, his grandmother, and his mother and the overindulgence of their bodies and impact of 

triple consciousness, Laymon shows how they view themselves, as well as their fraught relationships 

with food.

 Following suit in the reactionary strong Black women trope, the Black women in Heavy face 

trauma—both generational and present—which force them to act in specific manners, from a normal-

ization of being consumed by men, the media, and America in general, to having abusive tendencies in 

order to stray from future potential harm from white institutions. This can also be seen through the 

mention of food habits throughout the novel, from Laymon’s grandmother’s place in the culinary world 

and conversation, to his mother’s focus on Laymon’s weight—whether he is “heavy” or not—and her 

food insecurities.

 All of this is a reaction to how Black women have been treated in the past and continue to be 

treated as consumable items and something that others are allowed to overindulge in without conse-

quence. This is still evident today in America with Black women such as Breonna Taylor within the 2020 

Black Lives Matter protests and the consumption of her body for the media and publicity without any 

real warrant of justice. The abuse of Black women causes them to see themselves through triple con-

sciousness, or the lens of both the white and male gaze, and react in ways that shift the blame to the 

Black community. In writing Heavy, Laymon achieves redirecting this blame back to white supremacy 

and the influence of the white systematic oppression of Black people, and specifically Black women, 

throughout America.

Essay

47 | Henkin



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