By Adeola Adeniyi | One of my rules regarding books is if I\u2019m at a library or bookstore and I see a black author on the back of a book cover, I automatically pick up the book and read the first fifty pages. I do this to support other black authors, and in turn, when I am on the back of a book cover, I hope someone else will do the same.<\/p>\n
Kiese Laymon gained popularity online in 2013 with a series of essays about being black and living in Mississippi. I found his brilliant, hilarious, weird, and dark first novel Long Division <\/em>by chance on the table inside the Argyle Road library in Brooklyn near where I was seated. I have always thought the book was meant for me to find because I fell in love with the characters on those pages. I have a deep loathing for math and a title such as \u201cLong Division\u201d would not have interested me had I not seen Kiese Laymon\u2019s picture inside on the book jacket.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Long Division <\/em>is the first book I have truly enjoyed reading since Paul Beatty\u2019s classic The White Boy Shuffle <\/em>and Aravind Adiga\u2019s The White Tiger. <\/em>Kiese Laymon is my current favorite writer because his first novel exhibited how limitless, wild, and creative black literature can be today. Long Division<\/em> is a book I wish had been in print when I was fourteen. Marlon James, a prominent Jamaican writer, discussed how Salman Rushdie\u2019s Shame<\/em> gave him permission to write in a different and creative manner than the mainstream, and Long Division<\/em> has given it to me with my own work.<\/p>\n