How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Mychal Denzel Smith starts off this epistolary exchange among Black men. He notes that he writes on the anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination and Nina Simone’s birthday. Smith is 26. He is finally comfortable enough to call himself a man, though he spent years being confused about what that entailed. When he was 21, he quarreled with his father, who expected him to take on more responsibility when Smith was still in school. Smith wanted to be a writer, but he didn’t know how to become one. Smith notes that, just yesterday, his father told him that he loves him. His father has been saying “I love you” a lot more this year. He wonders about all the time they’ve missed together.

Darnell Moore writes to Smith that “‘living’ is the most radical act” that Black men can perform (81). Moore doesn’t go to therapy like Smith does, though he has a master’s degree in clinical counseling and has a history of suicide attempts. He spent his early twenties in bed a lot, like Smith, trying to escape from life. When he was awake, he spent much of his time trying to convince those around him that he “was straight and, therefore, acceptable and honorable as a Black man” (81). It was his mother who told him that he shouldn’t keep anyone in his life who could not love him. Living, Moore insists, is as revolutionary as “Joseph Beam’s call for Black men to love other Black men” to counteract racism and patriarchy (81). He admits that he has ignored the struggles of so many of his brothers, noting how class has also come between them. He sees now that his living is connected with that of so many others.

Laymon writes to Moore and Smith. He tells Smith that his letter made Laymon think of Baldwin’s essay “Alas, Poor Richard,” which Laymon has always found to be harsh on Richard Wright. In it, Baldwin writes that Black people know each other’s secrets and can, therefore, knock the other’s hustle. Laymon knows that the hustle is a gendered thing. He knew growing up that, no matter how a Black man treated a woman or a male partner, he was never to knock another man’s hustle. Laymon tells them that the Black man with whom he spent most of his life wasn’t his father and never expressed affection for him. That man had an aneurysm two weeks earlier. Laymon criticizes those who say that Black boys need Black father figures—an idea he finds femiphobic. He thinks, instead, that the women in his family needed generous partners more than he ever needed a father. What Black children really need, he insists, are “waves of present, multifaceted love” (84). He thinks of a Black man with whom his mother had partnered. That man abused Mama. Laymon defended her from this man, and his mother broke up fights between Laymon and the man. This Black man was a pillar in their community. Laymon knows that he could have knocked the man’s hustle by talking about what the man was doing to his mother. He also avoided speaking up so as not to spread his mother’s business. Now, Laymon realizes that any kind of love “that necessitates deception is not love” (84). Laymon regrets that and is now “ready to be better at love” (86).

Kai M. Green writes to Laymon, Moore, and Smith and thanks them for being vulnerable. He wonders what men can do with their scars. Green talks about the changes he sees in the mirror—his narrowing hips and sharpening jawline. He feels masculine and pretty. He was born a Black girl named Kiana and grew up to be a Black woman. As a girl, he endured sexual abuse at the age of eight and was found to be “a fast girl” (87). Green carried guilt with him, and it gave him migraines. He was “once a queer hippie kid searching for peace in a New England boarding school” because home could not contain him (86). He then became “a masculine-identified lesbian [and] a femme-loving stud who was afraid to love other masculine folk” (86). Now, he is “a Black transman [and] queer boi” (86). He thinks again of his scars. He has visible ones from self-harming and from his double mastectomy. He has parents who live with depression and a father who experienced crack addiction. Green’s mother remained with his father because she loved him, despite how much the drug changed him. Green laments the ways in which “[c]rack destroyed so many Black love stories” (87). Green’s mother told him that only in the past few years has she stopped sleeping with her purse under her pillow, still living with past fears of having it stolen by Green’s father. Green says that his parents haven’t been together for six years.

Marlon Peterson writes to the group. He tells them that two months ago, he moved out of his parents’ house. Prior to that, he spent a decade in prison. Peterson is from Brooklyn. People tell him that he should go “see a quack” because he seems emotionless (89). He insists that there are lots of people and things he cares about, which is why he mentors. However, he is numb to deeper feelings. He knows how he got there. He had an older brother who loathed him. He was a nerdy kid. He was nearly raped at 14. He was shot at 18. He was arrested for first-degree murder at 20, though he never killed anyone. He received his sentence at age 22. Peterson meets “great women who want to love [him]” and he thinks he wants to love them back (89). He remembers that his father told him not to suffocate his spirit, to tell others how he feels about them.