How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

This essay collection was part of Laymon’s effort to reclaim his material and rewrite it according to his original vision. Laymon’s commitment to revising his first two books, including his first and only novel, Long Division, is in keeping with his belief that revision is key to Black living. As part of the art of revision, Laymon has had to think critically and introspectively about what it means to be a Black, male American writer from the South. His revision process also included interrogating the compromises that institutions and publishing companies have tried to foist on him versus maintaining his integrity as an artist and as a human being.

Laymon initiates his writing career as an 18-year-old undergraduate at Millsaps College in his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, where he writes for the school newspaper “a satirical essay […] on communal masturbation” that subtly criticized “violent civility [at] Millsaps,” as encouraged by “its Greek culture” (144). This essay stoked the ire of the college’s president, George Harmon, who used his institutional power to mark Laymon as “a controversial writer who consistently editorializes on race issues”—as though that in itself were a bad thing (144). Harmon’s letter to “more than twelve thousand overwhelmingly white” (144) members of the Millsaps community defined Laymon before he had a chance to define himself in the