How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Laymon chronicles the steadily mounting deaths from the coronavirus. He condenses months of activity over a 14-day period. He notes that then-President Trump repeatedly reassures the public, via Twitter, that the nation is prepared to handle the health crisis. A friend of Laymon’s, the writer and biologist Joe Osmundson, advises Laymon against going to the Association of Writers Programs, a conference that Laymon will not be paid to attend. Additionally, he has been scheduled to give paid readings in Ohio and Virginia. He makes most of his income from such events. He assumes that the readings will be postponed, though the one in Cincinnati is sold out. Laymon admits to feeling lonely and afraid.

Meanwhile, the number of American deaths from coronavirus climbs steadily. Trump insists that, had the nation not acted quickly, the number would be higher. Laymon thinks of his grandmother, "Grandmama," who would need to work for a year to earn the money that he will make at these two readings in Ohio and West Virginia. Laymon decides not to shake hands or sign books at the Ohio event. Then he changes his mind. He even hugs people. Someone gives him a ticket to a Lauryn Hill concert, but Laymon doesn’t go. He also skips out on a dinner invitation. He feels proud of himself, as though he’s looking out for his elders.

In Cincinnati, he is waiting for a car service to drive him to Marshall, West Virginia. An “old white man with large knuckles pulls up” (14). Neither he nor Laymon is wearing a mask or gloves. Laymon does use hand sanitizer. Before the West Virginia event, Laymon meets the organizers for dinner.

Back in his room after dinner, Laymon feels feverish and wonders if he has coronavirus. He goes to the venue where the reading is being held. He signs books at the event. Laymon meets “[a] gentle tall white man” who gives him hand sanitizer at the event and then takes Laymon back to his hotel. The men talk about Randy Moss and Jason Williams. They also talk about coronavirus. They do not shake hands when they bid each other goodbye.

After 40 Americans die of coronavirus, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves cuts his European vacation short. At five o’clock the next morning, another white man picks Laymon up to drive him to the airport. They don’t speak. When the man drops Laymon off, Laymon gives him a big tip that the man holds like “a boogery Kleenex” (17). Laymon is dressed all in black for his trip. He also wears two dog tags. One bears a quote from James Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook” and the other is a quote from the Lucille Clifton poem “why some people be mad at me sometimes.”

By Day Five, 413 Americans are dead from coronavirus, and Trump will not apologize for his response. Governor Reeves decides that the one abortion clinic in Mississippi can close because it “is not an essential business,” while the gun stores remain open (17). Laymon recalls how Governor Reeves was once a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, which had harassed Laymon and his girlfriend at the time, Nzola, while wearing “Confederate capes, Afro wigs,” and blackface (17). Laymon knew that Reeves’s membership in that fraternity would qualify him for both the governorship and president of the United States.

By Day Six, 9,400 Americans are dead. Trump will not admit to being wrong. Meanwhile, Kiese’s mother continues going to work. Among the dead, Laymon learns, is a former student of his, Kimarlee Nguyen. Kimarlee had been discouraged from writing about her Cambodian identity and her family’s memories of the Khmer Rouge. Then, Nguyen began writing “more deeply into the historic imagination of ancestral spirits” (20).

By Day Seven, 104,051 Americans are dead. Uprisings occur in various American cities after Darnella Frazier films the Minneapolis police executing George Floyd and Breonna Taylor is murdered by the police in her own home. A week earlier, in a protest in Oxford, Mississippi, “a lone white Jewish teacher […] cuts his hands and places his bloody handprints all over the biggest Confederate monument on the campus of Ole Miss’” (20). The teacher then spray-paints the words “spiritual genocide” all over the monument before he is arrested. Laymon helps to bail him out while also bailing out Black Lives Matter protestors in several cities. At the time, Laymon lives in a house that was “once the site of a Confederate mansion” (20).

When 113,774 Americans are dead from coronavirus, Laymon drives by two huge Confederate monuments in Oxford. Black police officers guard them. Laymon imagines asking the officers if they feel humiliated by the task. He imagines them calling for backup and himself blasting the N.W.A. rap “Fuck tha Police” over his car stereo, at which point the Black officers would join him in rapping. When the backup white officer would arrive, Laymon would explain why the monuments are reminders of Black suffering. But, Laymon admits, white Mississippians already know that. What they do not know is that “Fuck tha Police” is a memorial for Black people and that “every member of N.W.A. had roots in the South” (22). Laymon fantasizes about doing to white people and their police what they routinely do to Black people. Instead of blasting the song, Laymon waves at the Black officers, and the men wave back. Laymon drives home.

By Day 10, 125,039 Americans are dead. Trump will not wear a mask, and Grandmama’s nurse has contracted coronavirus. Meanwhile, the Mississippi legislature has finally agreed to take down the state flag. On Day 11, Governor Reeves “vetoes a bill […] that grants relief and forgiveness to residents in Jackson who cannot pay their water bill” (25).

In a conversation with civil rights heroine Frankye Adams-Johnson, she tells Laymon that young white people are having an awakening, like the hippies had in the 1960s. She describes the latter as “the master’s children who’d turned on their parents” (26).

Laymon thinks about Governor Reeves and other white men from Mississippi. He knows that Reeves doesn’t love the Deep South or the state any more than Trump is a lover of the nation. They are, in Laymon’s estimation, dedicated to two things: the suffering of the most vulnerable and never admitting to any wrongdoing.

Laymon is turning in an article to Vanity Fair. The money he makes from this assignment will go to residents of Jackson who are unable to pay their water bills. Within proximity of the armed Confederate statue in Oxford, young Emmett Till was murdered; Fannie Lou Hamer was almost beaten to death; Medgar Evers was murdered before entering his home; and Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors, a group comprised only of white men, votes to keep the Confederate monument in the center of Oxford, where Laymon teaches, writes, and lives. Laymon begins to think that he may need a gun, though he doesn’t want one and doesn’t like the prospect of having to kill someone. He just wants to be free.

Laymon reaches out to the young activist Theron Wilkerson. He asks Wilkerson, a teacher of African American Studies at Murrah High School in Jackson, what he thinks of Adams-Johnson’s statement about awakenings. Wilkerson talks about his father being forced to pledge allegiance to a Confederate flag (the former Mississippi state flag) for his whole life. He talks about his father being called the n-word and being hit in the head with a hammer. Then, Wilkerson talks about when his aunt and her friends turned over a mail truck to protest the integration of all-Black O.E. Jordan High School and his father’s wish to destroy businesses in Oxford’s square after watching Roots in a segregated theater. Wilkerson concludes that America’s sin is “its commitment to being the same” (30).