![]() This is also a book about racism, and the unconscionable levels of racist violence and oppression in this country, on which this country was founded, and which is woven into every single system of power, including the education system. Laymon highlights moments in which certain concepts or words entered his vocabulary, the phases in which he became proficient at writing about various parts of his experience. His mother (a professor at Jackson State University working towards her PhD through most of childhood) assigned him reading and essays on top of his normal school work, edited his pieces, and impressed on him the importance of writing, re-writing, re-reading, revising. This book is also about Laymon's education as a writer, reader, and thinker. As Laymon asks near the end of the book, "Can we just not lie?" ![]() It feels trite to call these introspections honest or raw or hard-won, though they are those things. He writes of a gambling addiction and other self-sabotage. He includes experiences of physical and sexual abuse, as well other body-related traumas such as eating disorders. Kiese Laymon writes about growing up Black and poor in Mississippi, raised by his Grandma and his single mom, to whom the book is addressed in the second person. It's so good I ended up giving up on another book I was also reading, because it paled in comparison. This is a book I want to own, so I can underline passages. But I really liked the relationships Kiera had with Cicada and with her sister, and I was very pleased with the book's ending. ![]() Some of the high school friend/boyfriend drama felt a little clunky, mainly because it was often a distraction from the main narrative of game situation. The chapters that briefly showed various diverse SLAY player's POVs added a lot. This book is a fast and fun read, and I liked how the story unfolded over a very short period of time. When a SLAY player in Kansas City is murdered over trying to sell in-game items for actual money, SLAY is suddenly a hot media topic and Kiera and her co-moderator Cicada (a Black college student in Paris whom Kiera has never met IRL) must figure out how to handle the new and scary outside pressures on their previously safe and hidden world. She has poured her heart and soul into building SLAY as a fantasy world exclusively for Black gamers to play free of harassment, but she's never told her younger sister, her parents, her boyfriend Malcolm or her white best friend Harper about her creation. Kiera is one of very few Black students at her private high school in Bellevue, Washington, and on top of the normal pressures of keeping up in her honors classes and applying to colleges she is also the secret developer of a multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY.
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