Kiese Laymon's "Long Division" and Words

While Mitchell S. Jackson's The Residue Years ultimately won the 2014 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, there were a few books on the short list for the award. One of those books was Kiese Laymon's Long Division (2013), a novel reminiscent, in some ways, to Octavia Butler's Kindred. Laymon's novel ostensibly takes place in 2013; however, characters oscillate between three different years: 2013, 1985, and 1964. The characters' movements through these varying years works to show that we should pay attention to our history and work to understand it; their time travel also highlights that even though things look like they have gotten better, a lot of the same issues still remain, just in varying ways. In this aspect, Laymon's novel treats some of the same themes that Gaines's work does, that of the changing, yet unchanging, times. I wrote about this last week in regards to In My Father's House.

Laymon's focus on language, and the use of it, should be seen as a discussion of the changing, yet unchanging, times. The 2013 section of the novel begins with the narrator City and LaVander Peeler preparing for a national contest entitled "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence," a contest that started "after states in the Deep South, Midwest, and Southwest complained that the Scripps Spelling Bee was geographically biased" (7). The judges give contestants a word, and the contestants must provide "correct sentence usage, appropriateness, and dynamism" to advance (7). The contest presents an interesting scene because while it supposedly represents those who do not have representation at the spelling bee, it ultimately just parades African Americans, Mexicans, and others in front of a national audience to essentially, as Billy says in Gaines's novel, to give lip service to change while not necessarily adhering to it.  

Part of that change relates to words and language as well. Throughout the novel, the usage and role of specific words gets discussed. Typically, the discussion centers around derogatory words that cause hurt and pain when spoken or written.  When City gets called in to the principal's office at the beginning of the novel, he ruminates on why Ms. Reeves summoned him there. He concludes that LaVander Peeler told her that City "called him a 'nigger'--not'nigga,' 'negroid,' 'Negro,' 'African American,' or 'colored'" (13). I do not want to get into too much detail about the novel, but the "er" at the end of the word above struck me, especially when thinking about it in relation to what happens at the conclusion of the novel when LaVander asks a chained up white man to spell the word. The man spells it with an "er," and LaVander simply replies, "All things considered, I don't think that's right" (252).

City deduces that LaVander turned him in because earlier someone turned LaVander in for calling City a "faggot." After the incident, LaVander began to use the term "homosexual" when taunting City "because he knew Principal Reeves couldn't punish him for using that word without seeming like she thought there was something wrong with being homosexual in the first place" (13). City muses about other derogatory words as well and their semiotic meanings. Ultimately, I think that these thoughts about the role of words, their meanings, and the way the power they have to construct and form people's perceptions of others is partly at the heart of Laymon's novel. Words, and even the correct usage of words, becomes a way that the past remains the same, as I mentioned earlier.

This discussion can be summed up by briefly discussing the "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence" finals. City gets eliminated on the word "niggardly." City provides a sentence that attacks the judges and the system they are perpetuating, using the word colloquially. He says, "I truly hate LaBander Veeler sometimes more than some of y'all hate President Obama and I wonder if LaBander Veeler should behave like the exceptional African-American boy he was groomed to be by his UPS-working father, or the, um, weird, brilliant, niggardly joker he really is when we're the only ones watching" (38). City's sentence gets him eliminated because the term means "stingy, cheap," and he does not use it in that way. Now, when providing a suitable example of the word, the judges highlight the power of language and how, without even referring to the color of the woman being spoken about, they perpetuate stereotypes even when using the term correctly. Their sentence is, "Perspiration covered the children who stared incessantly at the woman in the head wrap since she insisted on being so niggardly with the succulent plums and melons" (38). The sentence oozes with stereotypes by referring to the woman in a "head wrap" who protects her "plums and melons." City knows the word provided a catch 22, and as he leaves the stage, he extols, "I mean, even if I used the word right, I still would've lost" before he goes on a vociferous tirade where he calls out the judges and the audience on their fears (38).

This post barely touches on the role of language and semiotics in Laymon's novel, but I hope it provides a little glimpse into the way we use words and how they have an effect on people. If you haven't already done so, I would strongly suggest picking up a copy of Laymon's essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013). (The title essay can be found here.) They are excellent, and extremely reminiscent of James Baldwin and Richard Wright.

Laymon, Kiese. Long Division. Chicago: Bolden, 2013. Print.