Blurbs:  Michael Cunningham  –  E. Lynn Harris  –  Diane Von Furstenberg  –  Ellen DeGeneres  –  Kaye Gibbons
Mark Childress  –  Andre Leon Talley  –  David Geffen  –  Dominick Dunne  –  Carole Radziwill  –  Patti Carr Black

Reviews:  San Francisco Chronicle  –  Book Sense Picks  –  Library Journal  –  Publishers Weekly

Blurbs

"Mississippi Sissy is a book I've been waiting for most of my life, though I didn't fully understand that fact until I read the book. We have, as it turns out, been sorely missing a book by a writer who is equally at home with Flannery O'Connor and Jacqueline Susann; who understands that Eudora Welty and Johnny Weissmuller are not only members of the same species but are intricately related; whose wit and insight are up to the highs, lows, and in-betweens that compose life as we know it. Kevin Sessums is some sort of cockeyed national treasure."

      — Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours

"Kevin Sessums is a brilliant writer. He is also a courageous one. Mississippi Sissy is beautifully told—hilarious yet harrowing, tragic yet inspiring. This book will deeply touch anyone who has ever felt different, which means every single one of us."

      — E. Lynn Harris

"The depth of the writing equals the depth of his wounds and yet there is an optimism, a surviving instinct, an honesty, and an incredible dignity throughout. This book is very powerful!"

      — Diane Von Furstenberg

"What a writer! What honesty! Kevin Sessums seamlessly weaves his heartbreaking, funny, outrageous, can't-put-it-down story. Read it! Read it! Read it! Then read it again."

      — Ellen DeGeneres

"Kevin Sessums has accomplished a rare feat by recounting the story of a place that can be brutishly cold to outsiders with a warmth and intelligent grace I've yet to honestly apply to my own work. I admire the separate peace he's made, having hoed the same kind of freakishly different row in the same homogenous field."

      — Kaye Gibbons

“Mississippi Sissy is an unforgettable memoir. I think it will strike a strong chord with many, many readers. It’s a far different book than “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” but it cast the same kind of spell over me while I was reading it."

      — Mark Childress

"I could not put Kevin Sessums memoir down. A young, white, gay boy, who grew up in a whirl and survived the injustices of class and prejudice, Sessums lyrically, narrates his escape from this tyranny of southern hate. This is the story of an angel with asbestos skin. Were this fiction, it would be on a par with John Kennedy Toole's The Confederacy of Dunces."

      — Andre Leon Talley, Editor at Large, Vogue

"Wow! What a book! I was both shocked and moved by it. It is said that an unexamined life is not worth living. Kevin Sessums examines his with wisdom and humor and a true writer's sense of grace. This book will create more than the proverbial buzz. It will cause a sensation."

      — David Geffen

"I was so moved by Kevin Sessums's funny, sad evocation of his childhood and teenage years in Mississippi Sissy. His youthful instinct for finding the theatrical, musical, and literary locals who opened his eyes to the outside world that he yearned to know about is wonderfully touching."

      — Dominick Dunne

"Mississippi Sissy manages to be both hilarious and heartbreaking, often in the same moment. It is a poignant story of innocence and sexuality; tragedy and courage. But it is ultimately a tale of perseverance of the human spirit. Kevin Sessums not only has a great story to tell, he is a great storyteller."

      — Carole Radziwill

"Gutsy, moving, richly-textured and immensely funny revelation, and a precisely remembered evocation of the southern political and cultural landscape in the 60s and 70s."

      — Patti Carr Black

Reviews

San Francisco Chronicle
March 11, 2007

M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I spells a place to leave: A gay son of the South looks back at his childhood.
In the heroic and heartfelt "Mississippi Sissy," the journalist recalls moments from his sometimes-torturous adolescence in the South. He concentrates on the people who influenced him most, both positively and negatively. He brings these experiences to life.

      — Christina Eng

Book Sense Pick
March, 2007

Sessums' autobiography offers the portrait of a gay man growing up in Mississippi, from the young child who will always be different, to his painful coming-of-age story, which will resonate with all too many, and, finally, as a young man, finding a haven in a circle of southern writers. Sad, witty, and compelling, this boy will engage your heart.

      — Jeanne Costello, Maria's Bookshop, Durango, CO

Library Journal
November 1, 2006

Celebrity journalist Sessums (Vanity Fair) grew up idolizing TV entertainer Arlene Francis and loving his white family's black maid-behavior that didn't fit the sensibilities of 1960s Mississippi. His memoir, with its echoes of the antebellum South, recollects the experiences of a child captivated by dress-up and the theater, pursuits his stern father, a local sports hero, could not understand. But then Sessums's parents die, leaving the young boy in the care of his grandparents, who while disagreeing with his homosexuality and liberal politics try to give him a loving home. After painful years spent grieving his parents, Sessums finds a surrogate family in arts critic Frank Hains and his literary friends, including Eudora Welty. They introduce him to the wider world of the arts and provide him with a sense of belonging. This memoir brings readers into a world where townspeople rejoice over the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. and where abusing blacks and homosexuals is common. While Sessums breaks little new ground, his storytelling brings warmth, honesty, and hope to those who don't fit in. Recommended with some reservations for large public libraries.

      — Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Publishers Weekly
November 6, 2006

This lovely, engaging memoir by acclaimed entertainment writer Sessums is not so much a gay coming-out story (although its author does discover and act upon his homosexuality) as an investigation of the effects of popular culture on a young, white boy growing up in the racist South in the 1950s. Sessums, who has written for Vanity Fair, Interview and Allure, was born in 1956 and raised outside of Jackson, Miss., by loving parents (although his father wished him to be less effeminate) both of whom died before his 10th birthday. But the heart of Sessums's memoir is how Hollywood and Broadway stars were obsessions and guide posts to a different life, and how female icons (such as Dusty Springfield and Audrey Hepburn) were important role models as he became part of a gay community. At times the prose can be preeningly literary as when Sessums describes his mother and her friends as "they carefully rubbed Coppertone suntan lotion on their smooth and lovely backs, their jutting shoulder blades like the nubs of de-winged angels grubbing around down here on earth." But at other times he can be emotionally shocking and precise as when recalling how, at 16, he hears his older friend Frank Hains tell a delighted Eudora Welty about his affairs with "young African-Americans." A marked detour from the often repetitive coming-out memoir, Sessums's story offers wit and incisive observation.