About the Book
Growing up queer in the Deep South meant learning early how to carry yourself.
To survive.
To turn humiliation into style.
It’s tucking chunks of myself away to spare Mama.
In Poking Fun at My Pusillanimity, Kenneth Cupp revisits his 1980s Mississippi childhood through kid’s logic with adult humor, precision, and unflinching honesty. Across a series of interconnected essays he moves through faith, shame, rumor, camp, danger, imagination,
and the long work of reclaiming courage in a voice
once taught to whisper.
This is a queer Southern becoming.
Not nostalgia.
Just the truth—worn without apology.
Vengeance don’t ever taste as sweet as you think.
If there’s a Pulitzer for closet drama, I’m a shoo-in.
It’s official. My mission: write a play so pure you could laminate it. So uplifting it could be stapled to a church bulletin. So safe it wouldn’t tempt a deacon.
And I’m standing there thinking— boy, I feel like I’ve been handed a vacation Bible school craft kit and told to solve world peace. But hey, somebody’s gotta thread this needle—and apparently it’s me—the town’s resident “sensitive creative,” which is code for: watch him, he’s a little different.
This can’t be another after-school special with a Bible verse stapled on crooked. It needs to play for folks who still think MTV is witchcraft and Dungeons & Dragons opens a portal.
As if that word alone doesn’t sound like a punishment handed down by God and the Board of Education, together.
While somebody claps.
Abstinence.
Terrified on the edge of wanting.
If I somehow pull this off, maybe I’ll finally get to feel like I truly belong here. Or at the very least, avoid getting stoned to death by an unforgiving crowd during potluck.
Back in my closet, fingers poised over the keys of that glorious IBM Selectric, I start weaving something that straddles reality and hope. Something that entertains them and makes them think. And if I can shine a light on a few truths—bonus.
One clack at a time, I’m building a play that’ll have everyone talking. And maybe—just maybe—thinking differently.
The topic—virginity. In Mississippi. In 1984.