Mississippi Sissy

February 26, 2007
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 forVanity Fair ,Interview andAllure , 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.

November 1, 2006
Celebrity journalist Sessums ("Vanity Fair") grew up idolizing TV entertainer Arlene Francis and loving his white family's black maidbehavior 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

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2007
Adult/High School-Sessums, a journalist who specializes in celebrity interviews, describes and analyzes his own childhood and youth, writing candidly of both sexual orientation and race relations in the '60s and early '70s. As a toddler, he swished and posed instead of responding to his basketball coach father's expectation of masculinity. His mother was more broad-minded. However, both parents were dead by the time he was nine, and he and two younger siblings were reared by their maternal grandparents. Small-town Mississippi during the third quarter of the 20th century was less hostile to the young gay boy than outsiders might imagine. Sessums recalls his grandmother's willingness to call him Arlene, in honor of television personality Arlene Francis; his sixth-grade teacher allowed his book report to be on Jacqueline Susann's best-selling "Valley of the Dolls"; there was even a local gay bar, which Sessums began visiting at 16. However, life provided great and certain bad times as well: the author recalls a sexual assault by a stranger when he was not yet a teen, and another by a preacher a couple of years later. Most harrowing is the event that frames the narrative, the murder of his mentor, and 19-year-old Sessums's discovery of the bludgeoned body. Whether gay or straight, readers will relate to the author's youthful awareness that self-certainty and terrifying uncertainty seem to be inextricably bound. His observations onand, more importantly, his experiences ofrace relations engage and reveal, and remind readers of the complexity of social status."Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.