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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.92
EAN: 9780312341015
ISBN: 0312341016
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: March 06, 2007
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: March 06, 2007
Sales Rank: 494131
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Mississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South. As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word 'sissy' on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins. In a memoir that echoes bestsellers like The Liar's Club, Kevin Sessums brings to life the pungent American south of the 1960s and the world of the strange little boy who grew there.
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Foolish choices
Being in therapy is an excellent idea.Sharing therapy is a foolish idea.Dull-usions of writing like Faulkner make for especially bad editorial choices. I hope little Kevin feels better real soon because . . . well, poor thing.
Rating: - Colorful and Candid
Mississippi Sissy is the story of the openly-gay Kevin Sessum's childhood spent in Mississippi. The writing is never dull and features a cast of colorful southern personalities (most notably Eudora Welty).
Mississippi Sissy didn't reduce me to tears. It didn't connect with me on a basic level, like I think Mr. Sessums was going for. I very much enjoyed reading his story, but did not find myself identifying with it on a personal level.
The tale of growing up gay in Mississippi ... Read More
Rating:  - THIS Mississippi Sissy was not impressed
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Good...not great
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - A Memoir from a Child's Stance with the Vocabulary of a Poet
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 ... Read More
Mississippi Sissy |
