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Holistic Guidance - Mississippi Sissy
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List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
Your Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Picador
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780312341022
ISBN: 0312341024
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2008-03-04
Publisher: Picador
Release Date: 2008-03-04
Studio: Picador
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Editorial Reviews:
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Mississippi Sissy is destined to become an American classic  In a book that echoes the time-honored fiction of Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor and memoirs by Mary Karr and Augusten Burroughs, Kevin Sessums brings the American South and the experiences of a strange little Mississippi boy to life.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: THIS Mississippi Sissy was not impressed
Comment: I finished the book and said to myself..."eh". I was underwhelmed as I ended up feeling that I was an outsider when I was expecting to be able to relate as one who is gay and Mississippi born. The story seemed more about impressing those who wrote the glowing forwards for the book with never ending references to authors, plays, and insider thespian references that the vast majority of the reading audience could/would not relate to. I could not relate to Mr. Sessum's plight as he shows nothing of himself as an adult gay man nor does he reflect effectively on what he experienced and what he learned from it. The plot is heavy on childhood and then jumps to a few teenage snippets.
I think the author was more bent on impressing people of his accomplishments and association with Eudora Weltey then with bringing himself in line with his readers. It all came off as a bragging right rather then a true insight on growing up gay in the deep south during the 60s and 70s. I big disappointment for all the fanfare.
I would recommend Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley any day or A Boy Named Phyllis over this one anyday.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good...not great
Comment: I read this book at the urging of a friend, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. However, I would not say that it imparted to me any new insights, or startling revelations about gay life, life in the South, child molestation, death, racism, and evangelical religion. Since these things seem to be the main topics of the text, I can't say that it was a truly unique attempt.
Two elements of the text that I as a reader could not reconcile was the ever changing timeline and jumping from point to point. This ever shifting timeline does not normally bother me, if I see how it serves the writing. I did not see that here. Nor did I ever buy the extraordinarily precise memories of a 2 year old. I found some of the details that Sessums gave about that time in his life to be a little self indulgent, and perhaps too flattering.
I know a bit about some of the topics in this memoir, and this text imparted no new light or insight. It was a good book, but not a classic. Sessums skills as a writer are undeniable, but I guess considering the richness of the topics included, I was hoping for a classic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Memoir from a Child's Stance with the Vocabulary of a Poet
Comment: MISSISSIPPI SISSY by Kevin Sessums has been a successful best seller since the journalist entered the realm of novelist in 2007. The reason for the extended readership of this coming of age story of a gay male in the 1970s South may puzzle some, but read a few chapters and the reason is clear: this is hilarious, sensitive, perceptive, colloquial writing at its best with the added attribute that Sessums' writing style is as eloquent as those writers he admired as a child - EM Forster, Flannery 'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, WH Auden, Toni Morrison, and Eudora Welty.
Sessums writes with candor about the racism he witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s, but his viewpoint is equally distributed between the gnarly vindictive vantage of his father and other white adults and the gentle love he worshiped in his closeness to his African American caretakers and colleagues. Orphaned at age 8 with his father's death in an automobile accident and his mother's subsequent death from cancer, Sessums was allowed more leeway with his propensity to dress and act like a 'sissy' and eventually came into his own sexuality both by exposure to a Pedophilic evangelist and his own exploration of gay bars and satisfying encounters with surprising partners (his first real love was a champion athlete who just happened to be African American!).
And while every page of this beautifully rendered memoir is full of elegant prose describing such issues as Southerner response to civil rights, the murder of JFK and MLK, Jr., participation in the lives of famous writers by way of his close friend Frank Hains, a journalist who molded Sessums in many ways, the author shares many of the idols of television ('What's My Line?' cast) and movies (Audrey Hepburn, etc) and other icons of the times of his maturing, giving the reader a memory book that goes far beyond simply a true personal memoir. Love, death, abuse, disease, racism, and dreams for a life of understanding blend on nearly every page. This is a book that is likely to become a classic and deserves all the weeks it spent on the national Best Seller Lists. It is just 'swell'! Grady Harp, August 08
Customer Rating:
Summary: "...enough sassy sissy smarts..."
Comment: I really wanted to like this book - and around page 200 - I think I finally started to.
From the offset the story travels in a bee's flight start to finish approach: but wait let's pause - and then resume - but never quite get back to the original point that a chapter or paragraph launched with. The story is frustrating (as if not edited or re-read subjectively by the author) - and often puts on airs of self-importance and name dropping to tie this autobiography onto some larger world or into the world's important events and happenings. A pattern Sessums seems to have been leaning into since his early life as the story tells it. He also seems to have an incredibly detailed memory from about 3.5 to 6 years of age... which at times seems a little filled in by a creative and self-flattering imagination.
Sessums is fascinated by his own "natural grace", "heightened sensitivities" and "exotic"-ness. He mentions these alluring attributes several times throughout the story - typically writing that these traits have been realized by other persons who he's encountered.
Sessums weaves back and forth interestingly for a while with an interesting imaginary friend crossing into real life as real people seem to fade out of the real world. He lays out tons of great references to "American classics" and other authors as well as to musicians, singers and musicals - some I am familiar with - others I've scratched down a list to look into.
He gives up an entire chapter of his own story to his brother's account of his time with Reverend Graham - which is so bizarrely out of step with the story in a forced fairytale tone - that by the end I thoroughly imagined bird's landing on ladies' outstretched fingers and a choir of angels bursting from the clouds.
In disclaimer, I will add: There is no way for me to imagine the losses Sessums encountered at a young age, matched up with being a sissy in southern culture, as well as with molestation. The book sloppily attempts to string itself into the issue of racism in the south through 1) an imaginary playmate, 2) a nanny/housekeeper type figure and 3) finally the man who takes his virginity.
Still wanting to have really liked this book, I dug into his website a bit before sitting down to type - trying to get a better feel for him as a person since the books gives so little (or what it gives seems incredibly far-fetched and not terribly likeable) - and found it interesting that an early negative review of his book dents his ego and he then makes a point of blogging that the critic gave no credit to the sensitive issues of race in the book (!) - that the critic isn't his "target audience" - that this mean critic is known to have no taste for "Southern gothic literature" - and that this is one more time in his life that the sissy is getting beat up on by a bully (and a lesbian at that).
His list actually makes her the perfect critic.
While Sessums blog is more current... it follows the same patterns as the book - it never lets the story tell itself - at least not until about page 203.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mississippi and it's best
Comment: In reading Mississippi Sissy, on my recent annual vacation to Seaside, FL; I was very moved by Kevin's descriptions of Mississippi, it's pride and it's prejudices, it's famous people and not so famous ones.
I, too, am from Mississippi, and in the same age bracket. I worked at the Clarion-Ledger / Jackson Daily News in the early 70's, 80's, into the 90's; so I know of some of the brilliant characters he wrote about.
Quite a book you wrote, Kevin. Great work and very much enjoyed by me. I will pass it along to others, insist they buy it and read it as I am sure my friends and some family members will enjoy it as much as I did. It captured the hot, sticky, small thinking South as it was and is.
S. K. Pepper
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