EDGE Boston

Kevin Jennings grew up in Winston-Salem, NC. Hs father was a fundamentalist preacher who died when he was eight years old. His mother was a simple woman who had to raise Kevin and his four siblings after their father passed.

Raised on Southern values, Jennings proudly showed the "stars and bars" (the Con=federate flag) and looked up to the likes of famous anti-integrationists George Wallace.

When his older bother married an African-American woman, however, Jennings changed his mind about divisions based on race. This attitude would eventually cross into other realms, including gender and sexual preference.

After facing years of taunting and derision for being different, Jennings escaped the tortures of his youth by becoming the first member of his family to attend college. At Harvard, Jennings officially came out and went on to become one of the nation’s first openly gay high school teachers at the prestigious preparatory school Concord Academy. While at CA, Jennings worked closely with the gay and lesbian student population. In the process, he continued to work on his own perspectives on the issues they all faced.

Today, as the founding director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, Jennings continues to work with and support students from all backgrounds and all walks of life and lifestyle.

In his new memoir, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son (Beacon Press), Jennings looks back at the people and events who made him the man he is today. EDGE spoke with the novelist recently prior to his upcoming appearance this Thursday (9/21) at the Brookline Booksmith.

EDGE: Who inspired you more-your mother or your father?

Kevin Jennings: My mother. She taught me the value of education and so many wonderful values. It’s absolutely her. My father was an Evangelical minister and was a difficult man in a lot of ways. He also died on my eighth birthday so I did not know him very well, and most of what I did know of him - particularly being a young gay person - was negative

EDGE: What were your earliest life lessons and how did they change over time?

Kevin Jennings: I was raised in an Evangelical home and the brand of Christianity we were taught was very negative and really involved judging other people a lot. It was a preoccupation, in fact. So the positive thing that happened as I got older was that all those Bible verses I had memorized as a kid got revisited and I found that the values it teaches are very much inline with my own. I had found that it was people who had twisted them. There is nothing wrong The Bible but there is something wrong with some of the people who use it the wrong way.

EDGE: What was the moment when you knew you had this life calling?
Kevin Jennings: I don’t know if there was a "moment-" It was not like I was the apostle Paul being blinded on the road to Damascus. But the good part of the church was that it taught us that life was for a higher purpose. My mother sacrificed so much so that my generation could have it better than she did. So that was something I learned from an early age- that I was here for more than just to make money and that the best thing I could do was to make things better for others. It is ironic that I went into teaching because I hated high school myself, but it fit with those values and that is how I got here. I followed those values like they were the North Star and they took me on paths that have benefited my life enormously. I have gotten at least as much out of doing this as the people we serve, and that is the secret about doing things like this.

EDGE: How did coming to the North change things?

Kevin Jennings: In some ways, coming to Harvard was the first time I had breathed freely in my life. I felt I did not fit in in so many ways in the South- Let alone being gay, I did my homework on time! So here I was among this diverse group of people who wanted to learn and who valued learning- It was wonderful! Harvard saved my life!

EDGE: What was it like to come out to your classmates and then your students?

Kevin Jennings: My family had known since I was in college. I would say that the talk I gave [while teaching] at Concord Academy was a defining moment in my life. I’m incredibly grateful to gave had the relationships I had with young people there that made that possible. They taught me to accept myself!

EDGE: When and where did you get the idea for GLSEN and what do you hope to o with it?

Kevin Jennings: That evolved organically also. After I came out at CA and we started the first gay-straight alliance, people from other schools started calling me and it began to dawn on me that there was this huge need. And these people were so isolated, so I wanted to give them a community so they would not be alone.

And it grew from there.

EDGE: What prompted you to write this book?

Kevin Jennings: A couple of things happened- First of all, people have been asking me to do a book like this for years. Whenever I went to speak at a school, I used the speech I used at Concord and people told me it should be a book. I was at Buckingham, Browne, & Nichols, and a woman from Beacon Press came and told me to write the book. When I got back to New York, there was a contact in my in box. That was a sign! I had also talked to my mom about this shortly before she died and she thought I should. Even with all the troubles we had gone through to hide certain things in my family. she said, "It’s all true, isn’t it?"
So in many ways, it is a tribute to my mother. I almost gave it up when it was time for the rewrite, though- I was just too busy. But on August 7 of 2005, I had a massive heart attack and very nearly died (ironically, the same way my father did) and that lit the fire under my butt to finish it. So I did the rewrite in three weeks and that was it.

EDGE: What do you hope people get from the book?

Kevin Jennings: I hope that people walk away from the book with a sense of hope and empowerment and a feeling that not only is change possible but they can be a part of that change happening.

Kevin Jennings will present a reading of Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son at Brookline Booksmith on Thursday, September 21.