How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

For 5 days a week, for 30 years, and for nearly 12 hours per day, Catherine Coleman has worked at a chicken factory, pulling out the guts of dead chickens. When Laymon was growing up, she rose at 4:30am each morning, bathed, and then prepared a breakfast of grits, smoked sausage, and pear preserves for her family. Laymon marveled at how “she got so fresh, so clean, just to leave the house and get dirty” (43). When she arrived home, she would greet him and go to “wash [the] stank off [her] hands” before hugging him (43).

On Saturday nights, Grandmama often stayed up late sewing pieces of old clothing together to make new outfits. Laymon didn’t fully understand his grandmother’s “stank or freshness” until he started listening to the hip-hop duo OutKast. He heard the music from their album ATLiens coming from a friend’s dorm room in college in 1996. By this time, Laymon had already decided that he would become a writer. His English instructors encouraged him to find his voice, while he knew that he, like anyone, had many voices. He figured that his teachers wanted “the kind of voice that sat with its legs crossed, reading the New York Times” (47).