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.