InsideOut: Interview with Kevin Sessum, Sissydom

by Owen Lipstein and Amanda Schmidt May/June 2008

Kevin Sessum has had a glamorous career as executive editor for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Allure, interviewing celebrities from Johnny Depp to Cher, but he hasn’t let it go to his head. In his New York Times Best-Seller memoir “Mississippi Sissy” (Picador, 2008), Sessums writes with earthy grace of a young boy orphaned amidst a brutal and chaotic Deep South of the 1960s — a kid who navigates all kinds of difference and heartache — but always manages to make connections to people, from his African-American housekeeper to Eudora Welty and James Brown. Kevin Sessums was recently called “some sort of cockeyed national treasure” by author Michael Cunningham. After speaking with him, we agree.

InsideOut: Tell us why you decided to write this memoir.

Kevin Sessums: I guess the answer to that is because I was asked to. When I would complain to my shrink that my life was a narrative, she would always say, “Well, why don’t you write a book? You are a writer.”

Then my agent called and said, “This [powerful editor] wants to have lunch with you to talk about doing a book about celebrity…”

I said, “That’s my day job, and if I ever write a book I don’t want it to be about that.”

And my agent said, “Well, she wants to take you to Michael’s to eat.” Michael’s is this sort of media-centric power-lunch place.

I went and had lunch, and 15 minutes into lunch she said, “You don’t want to do this book, do you?”

I said, “No, I want a free lunch at Michael’s, to be honest.”

We ended up talking, and she had done a lot of memoirs of southerners or Texans. I began to tell her my life story, and by the end of the lunch, she looked at me and said, “I was determined to do a book with you when I sat down to lunch — and that’s the book that you should do.”

IO: The book touches several subjects, from being an outsider — or sissy — to the death of your parents, the brutality of racism and sexual abuse, and the violent murder of a man you were so close to. How did you decide to focus on sexuality in the title?

KS: I don’t think [the word] sissy is about sexuality. I think it’s about other things. I think “Mississippi Sissy” is a book more about otherness and difference than sexuality. It’s a coming-of-age story, of course, but it’s also about race, because it’s set in the 1960s. It’s about the power of maternal love. It’s a murder story. At its base though, it is a story about otherness and difference in all of its forms.

IO: How did you manage to write about so much trauma without sounding self-pitying?

KS: I think because I waited long enough to write it. I’ll be 52 next week, and I’m writing about childhood. It’s inside of me, but it was a while ago and I have distance from it. If you are lucky enough to be able to stand outside your own life and look at it as narrative, then if you have to suffer through trauma after trauma, that separateness saves you. A lot of times it was like automatic writing. As I told friends of mine who are religious, [I realized] it was the closest that I have ever had to an extended state of prayer. It was like I was being led. It was prayerful.

IO: You were a child in Mississippi during integration. Can you describe the intersection of your own difference and your consciousness around racism?

KS: I think anyone who feels different before they are aware of what that difference is has an empathy for anyone else who is different and looked down upon in society. I very early on had a conscious distaste for the prejudice around me. Living in Mississippi in the early 1960s is like living in Baghdad 2008. I mean, there was a war on. People were being killed and murdered, and it was just so passionate, and it was in the streets.

Up at Ole Miss, truly there was a war. Kennedy sent in the troops and people were shot and killed. Kennedy was killed, Medgar Evars was killed, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were killed. I just think that if you [had] any heightened sense of difference, you could not ignore it — even as a 6- or 7-year-old child.

The other side of that is that I was taken in by these grandparents, who, if they said the “N” word once, they said it 50 times a day. I knew it was wrong, but when Matty May [my grandparents’ African-American houskeeper] called me on it, I really knew it was wrong. I would look at my grandparents and think, You know, if they were on a TV show, they would be the bad people because they are so bigoted… And yet they were the two people who saved me and loved me unconditionally, who took me in and helped make me the man I am today.

IO: Matty May was a significant figure in your life. You must miss her very much.

KS: Every time [a] niece or nephew graduates from high school, I take them out to Los Angeles for Oscar Weekend. I take them to the CAA [Creative Artists Agency] big party at my friend’s house, and then the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and show them my Cinderella life. I am very aware that I lead the Cinderella life, but on Monday morning, I scrub the floors.

So at the picnic event last time, I took my nephew. One picnic table over was Sidney Poitier, and I said, “I’ve got to go tell him about ‘Mississippi Sissy,’” because it was just about to come out.

I knelt at his feet and introduced myself, and began to tell him Matty May’s story and how much he had meant to her. Some other famous person came by to say hello and to kiss him, and I started to get up and not bother him, and he grabbed my hand and said, “No, I want to hear about Matty May.”

And I knelt [again], and for about 15 to 20 minutes, I told him the story of Matty May and how much he had meant to her. I felt her presence so strongly there, and I was so thankful for that moment.

IO: Do sissies have it easier today?

KS: I think it’s always hard to be a sissy because of the masculine norms that one grows up with as a man, just as it’s hard to be a tomboy because of the norms that women grow up with. To own one’s sissydom takes a strength that masculine people never have to tap into, so if you are a sissy and you own that, you will be stronger than any outwardly strong man that’s in your midst.

When I was on my book tour, [a couple from Nashville] approached me at a signing. The woman asked, “Would you sign this book, and would you sign this next book to my son?”

I said, “Well, you don’t look old enough to have a son who should be reading this.”

And she said, “No, he’s 8, but he’s a Tennessee sissy, and reading your book made me a better mother,” and she started to cry. And I started to cry.

IO: What did it mean to you as a teenager to be hanging out with Eudora Welty?

KS: I was 17 — a little mascot with a shag haircut. I didn’t know her well-well-well, but I was around her enough to realize she was certainly no spinster. She loved a good time. I was lucky enough to pour her Maker’s Mark for her and listen to her stories.

I think one of the reasons I was able to do the job I was able to do at “Vanity Fair,” and interview all these movie stars and celebrities, is because once you’ve been at a southern kitchen table drinking Maker’s Mark with Eudora Welty, interviewing Madonna is a piece of cake.
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

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