How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Laymon is living in a house owned by the University of Mississippi. The house is up the road from William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, also located in Oxford. A “raggedy American flag” hangs outside Laymon’s house (32). Laymon knows he should remove it, but he’s afraid to. Many of his neighbors fly Magnolia flags. This was the state’s official flag during the Civil War and it became the state flag in 1894. The Magnolia flag was Mississippi’s flag of secession. For Laymon, the American flag is worse than the Magnolia flag. The one that he flies has blue bleeding into purple; the red has faded to a pink, and the white has yellowed. Keeping the flag up is “a manageable fight to win outside” (34).

The cowardice of white Americans “created Black intergenerational poverty,” and that poverty is why Laymon accepted a job in Oxford and not in Jackson (34). Laymon knows the work of Faulkner, Oxford’s native son, very well. He had read all of the literary master’s work by the time he was 15. He knew Faulkner like he knew Ice Cube, Voltron, En Vogue, Good Times, and banana-flavored Now and Laters. But these other things felt like they belonged to him in a way that Faulkner didn’t.