|
A HOMOSEXUAL HILLBILLY GOES TO HARVARD AND FINDS HE'S HAD ENOUGH 
At the age of twelve, I became fixated on 1950s' B-Movie actress Jayne Mansfield after watching a made-for-TV movie chronicling the late actress's life. Entranced by the TV movie's depiction of Mansfield's highs (moving with muscleman husband Mickey Hargitay into a Sunset Boulevard mansion dubbed "The Pink Palace") and lows (death by decapitation on a Lousiana highway), I ran to the library in search of a biography of the celluloid Barbie doll. After reading Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties about sixty times, I finally burned out on the hugely breasted entertainer's story. Whether a desire to connect with the shared experience of others or literary rubbernecking, that virgin foray into the world of real-life stories sparked a lifelong interest in biography. My tastes, sadly, still run toward the low-brow. And though I have a copy of Anthony Trollope's autobiography, it is still as shiny and uncreased as it was when I received it two years ago. But I have read Jane Fonda's autobiography. And Rosalyn Carter's. The aforementioned celebrity biographies and autobiographies, while easily digestible, often leave me feeling as though I've spent the weekend mainlining Twinkies and Red Bull. Conversely, the memoirs and personal essay collections written by people for whom writing is a vocation, more often than not leave me feeling nourished, less alone. Skirting the periphery of these strands of memoir is another form autobiography that I can only call "autoagendabiography." These are autobiographies that enjoy letting the reader in on the usual memoir-esque reminiscences about their grandmother's peach cobbler or the sadistic nun at parochial school, but are also, in between the lines and with a bang at the end, Making A Point. Certain former first ladies with failed national health care agendas and charismatic junior senators with presidential aspirations come to mind. So why is it important for us to read Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son? A former teacher and the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network (GLSEN), Kevin Jennings has written a memoir that is a conundrum. It's unremarkably written and its points (being mean to gay kids is bad, strained relationships sometimes heal, poor kids sometimes get to go to Harvard) are the stuff of after-school specials. |
| "Growing up in trailers, let alone loving them, is not something most of us would be excited to admit." |
|
And yet.
Jennings's straight-shot narrative of his life from a white trash, North Carolina upbringing to current A-gay status (Jennings was asked to help intervene in the Grey's Anatomy — Isaiah Washington "faggot" scandal) is, well, touching. Despite the tired gay cliches (". . . [my students] rushed the pulpit of the creaky old chapel, hugging me, crying, a display of adoration that I would later joke was the only time in my life I felt like Madonna"), despite Jennings's very drawn-out ruminations on the "should I/shouldn't I come out to my students/co-workers" question, and despite the uninspired A-Z narrative, the book is moving. Because Jennings is unflinchingly honest about his experiences, it's hard not to feel respect for his courage in sharing his story and empathy for the abuses he endured. Jennings spent his early years in various trailers throughout the south. For the uninitiated, Jennings differentiates the various types of trailers (single vs. double-wide), shatters the myths that surround them (most trailers are not mobile and actually sit on foundations), and lets us know that one of his favorite hobbies as a kid (next to burning trash) was shopping for new trailers. Jennings wisely takes his time with these descriptions and anecdotes, knowing that his readers will probably feel like they are being let in on a shameful secret. Growing up in trailers, let alone loving them, is not something most of us would be excited to admit. In between moving from trailer to trailer, Jennings's life is a country song in overdrive: itinerate fundamentalist preacher father who dies young, uneducated mother who works her ass off at McDonalds, rats in the bedroom, abusive older brothers, gay-bashing schoolmates, and teachers all too willing to turn a blind eye. As Jennings's story unfolds, there is no whitewashing of what he endures, but also, wonderfully, there is no whitewashing of his own bad behavior. In detailing the origins of his inner-activist, Jennings says, "My first political hero was Alabama's segregationist governor George Wallace. In a time when we (poor white people) had no voice, Wallace spoke for us; he was a redneck who stood up for the System, to the Northern agitators who were forcing their way of life on us." In due time, particularly after his older brother marries a black woman, Jennings sees the backwardness and sadness of racism. But for the several pages in which Jennings details his childhood experience of race relations in the South, he does not fall all over himself apologizing for his racism. He has the courage to write directly from the mindset and environment in which he was raised. It is shocking to read, but it also forces the reader to hear how his kin justified racism. The bulk of this story, however, is about Jennings's personal experiences as a gay person navigating the educational system as both a student and teacher. After years of fierce gay bashing at various schools, Jennings is finally allowed to attend a school for exceptional students where he is valued for his intellect, rather than judged for his sexual identity. His academic successes lead to admission to Harvard where he continues to excel academically and begins to embrace his sexual orientation, and plants the seeds of his activist future. In between all of this, Jennings allows the reader to witness the growing chasm between his new highbrow world and the poor, uneducated world of his family, a family of which he is increasingly ashamed. Jennings does not smooth over his embarrassment at his family's unrefined ways. He lets the reader know that when his mother comes to visit him in Cambridge that he is "still ashamed that my mom was an uneducated Southerner with a thick accent who worked for barely minimum wage." Wisely, Jennings doesn't placate his reader with reassurances that he is going to change later in his story. As with the racism, it's as if by letting his less attractive character traits just sit there, Jennings demonstrates that we all misbehave sometimes-and it's not pretty. The remainder of Jennings's story focuses on his experiences teaching at exclusive New England prep schools, his overly tortured decision about coming out at his job, the nascent beginnings of the organization he heads today, the reparation of his relationship with his remarkable mother and the blow-by-blow account of her death. And while the coming-out-on-the-job narrative might compel a reader to mutter, "C'mon already, just do it," and the minutiae of the mother's death might leave a reader cross-eyed, by this point in the book, the reader's relationship with Jennings is established enough to see these moments through. So why is it important for Kevin Jennings to tell his story if, writing-wise, he isn't up there with Didion, or celebrity-wise, as famous as Courtney Love? If one of the reasons we read is to hear someone illuminate our own experience, to share empathetically (and for some of us that is the reason we read) then Jennings's story, ham-fisted points and all, is important. Because if there are students being assaulted at school for being perceived as "different," or there are teachers staying in the closet for fear of losing their job, or there's a kid from Appalachia who would rather read Baudelaire than play baseball, Jennings might be sending these people a life raft. And I'd take a life raft over a Twinkie-Red Bull buzz any day. |