How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Laymon writes a letter to his late Uncle Jimmy. He writes about learning “that there was a rickety bridge between right and wrong” and that he would be judged more harshly than white boys would be for “leaning toward the wrong side” (167). Like Uncle Jimmy, however, Laymon stopped caring.

On July 4, not long before his death, Uncle Jimmy gave up smoking crack. Unfortunately, it was the last day Laymon’s mother saw Jimmy alive. Laymon learned that Jimmy’s path “ran adjacent to the refined, curbed avenues that nearly all [Black women] want their Black boys to travel” (167).

On July 7, Laymon got a call. No one could find Jimmy. On July 12, Jimmy’s body was prepared for viewing at a funeral home. His sister, Sue, eulogized him. She expressed three ideas in her eulogy: There are no “n******”; there’s no such thing as “[p]erfectly sanitized, wholly responsible Black people”; and Jimmy was “equally wicked and wonderful” and had plenty in common with all of them (169). She noted that Jimmy wasn’t any different from anyone in that church at his funeral. He was simply “bad at being human” (169).

Laymon regrets not calling Jimmy more, not telling him enough that he loved his uncle. He also notes that, if they really loved each other, he and his Uncle Jimmy would have “[knocked] each other’s hustles” (171). They were, after all, both drowning, just in different ways. The last thing Jimmy said to Laymon was at Christmas before he died. Uncle Jimmy told Laymon that no matter what good any Black person tries to do, white people do everything they can to remind Black people that they once owned them.

Laymon loved the women in his family enough to ask them questions, and they loved him enough to answer those questions. However, Laymon doesn’t think that he ever asked his Uncle Jimmy any questions other than why he “looked so happy in [his] Vietnam pictures” and what he meant when he declared that there are “some fine b***es on Earth” after picking Laymon up from graduate school (172).

Laymon started writing this book of essays to Uncle Jimmy before his uncle died. He decided to “write through what was helping [him] kill [himself]” (174). He wishes now that his uncle had told him that they were messed up and that the country had set them up to be that way. They owed it, however, to their teachers and their children to find new paths “into beauty, health, compassion, citizenry, and American imagination” (174). This meant that they would have to rely on love and meaningful revision. Laymon wonders what his life would have been like if he didn’t have Jimmy’s example as a warning. He wonders, too, what his life would have been like if he had told Jimmy that he loved him. Laymon declares this book “a love letter written a few years too late” (174).

The narrative then switches to a letter to Jimmy from Laymon’s Aunt Sue. She writes that she can still feel her brother’s presence, though they miss the little things about him, like his love for summer sandals and his singing of the blues. She says that their mother is weaker since he died. Some of her resilience departed with Jimmy. She tells him that Laymon thinks that he lives with Jimmy’s ghost, while she insists that he lives with Jimmy’s spirit.

Sue tells Jimmy that a young woman with whom he got high has since gotten clean and joined Sue’s ministry. She knows that Jimmy loved his family, but she wasn’t sure that he ever loved himself. She knows now that love demands “forgiveness, truth, high expectations, and patience” (175). The young woman told Sue more about Jimmy. She said that Jimmy had encouraged her to get her life back on track and get custody of her children. She said that Jimmy was kind and tried to help others. He gave her money to buy her children clothes.

Sue remembers the last time she spoke to Jimmy. He said that he no longer hated white people. He seemed at peace. While cleaning out his house, she found his journal. While reading his words, she felt his pain and his desperation. She tells him that everyone has addictions. The key to life is to live with dignity and to try not to drag other people down in one’s misery. She tells Jimmy that his life was not in vain and that he helped their mother to find the strength to keep fighting and living.