Sallie Bingham
Sallie Bingham is a writer, teacher, feminist activist, and philanthropist.
Sallie’s first novel was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1961; she has since published six additional novels and the well-known family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (Knopf, 1989). Her forthcoming book, The Silver Swan: Searching for Doris Duke, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May 2020.
She is founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which published The American Voice, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.
The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
“The heart and soul of my book lies in the vibrant silences I heard between the lines, silences that translated themselves into words as I wrote. The Blue Box does not share the soft glow that softens the details of so many family histories; its light approaches a glare. For, when I chose to write about upper-white women in Virginia, I knew I was making a choice in many ways alien for me; I have always been more interested in the lives of the people, largely women, who according to our culture do not count.”
— Sallie Bingham
Sallie's Latest
Nearly Lost
The first issue, of course, is to level the playing field so that women have the same opportunities for education and performance as men....
Sometimes It Takes a While
Several decades ago, I became aware of the work and life of Enid Yandell, a Kentucky-born, Paris educated sculptor whose statues I used to see at various ceremonial points in Louisville. This early twentieth-century woman artist, although acclaimed in her time, seemed to be forgotten. Yandell was one of a group of talented women artists ...
Two Spirits
Two Spirits have always walked among us, unrecognized and, at least in the past, often reviled....
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Don’t Let Sex Distract You from the Revolution
The discussions about gender were more congenial to me than the groups that confronted the problems heterosexual relations posed for women committed to some form of the revolution....
Teaching Girls
A small school in a southern city where girls were usually curbed physically or mentally, the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls and its teachers did not deal in... limits. My years there started me on my way as a writer....
Galentine’s Day and Our Great Leaders
My only problem with this pleasantly mad-cap idea is that it seems to focus on friendships between ladies......
The Silver Swan
The Next Step
How to live on nothing is a question the publishers have not condescended to consider....
Celebrities
These days if a writer is smitten with the idea of writing a new book—a new analysis—of any supposedly well-known person, the obstacles to her research will be enormous....
Death of Ten Thousand Pricks
Scheduled to be published in August, 2018, The Silver Swan is now delayed till sometime in 2019....
I Want It to Be Said
By now we all know that the discrimination that afflicts one group afflicts all of us....
Doris Duke: Love, Sex, Power and Money
Does it matter that she never found her match in terms of money, status and achievement?...
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women....
Music Hath Charms
I grew up with almost no music at all. Music, after all, is not words and only words counted in that world....
Doris Duke and the Sea
Both Doris and Alleda developed physical strength, courage and confidence battling the waves on the beaches at Newport....
Doris Duke Goes to Press
My relief in learning that “The Silver Swan” will be published next June prompts me to rejoice like old-time newspaper editors when the daily edition was put to bed....
Doris Duke
A Passion for Houses
This house has reigned on a leafy corner of a beautiful street, a few blocks from the Santa Fe Plaza, for 150 years, inhabited by a distinguished family....
Doris Duke and the Sea
Both Doris and Alleda developed physical strength, courage and confidence battling the waves on the beaches at Newport....
Doris Duke in Pictures and the Deconstruction of the Past
My chapters about Doris’ war-time service are some of the most revealing, and most controversial, in my upcoming biography....
Girl vs. Bull
I know Doris Duke would have enjoyed seeing the statue of a little girl confronting the bull of Wall Street....
Happy Birthday, Doris
Sometimes a choice of a name without family connotations means an attempt to break loose from the past....
On To The Next
Now that my newest book, Mending: New and Selected Short Stories is reaching its readers, I find myself in a rather delightful quandary....
Doris Duke and Me: Dancing
Doris Duke practiced with Martha Graham’s company in New York and proudly wore their black satin jacket with her name and the company’s name on the back....
Something Has Gone Wrong
Something has gone wrong with this country, and I don’t know how or exactly when....
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women....
My Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships of any kind—even that sort involved in learning to sew on a button—depend on a bitter and prolonged deprivation of pleasure, a narrow and deep focus that will never allow for what we call a balanced life....
Writing
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Don’t Let Sex Distract You from the Revolution
The discussions about gender were more congenial to me than the groups that confronted the problems heterosexual relations posed for women committed to some form of the revolution....
Mary Oliver Is Dead
Her gift seems simple and yet it is neither simple nor common but the "confiding intimacy" of her great poems....
Inhabited by Poetry
Beginnings of anything are always inspiring, more than middle or ends, which tend to be tedious....
The Next Step
How to live on nothing is a question the publishers have not condescended to consider....
Celebrities
These days if a writer is smitten with the idea of writing a new book—a new analysis—of any supposedly well-known person, the obstacles to her research will be enormous....
A Nation Afraid
I've been wondering why we in the blessed U.S. seem so frightened of just about everything....
Women
Nearly Lost
The first issue, of course, is to level the playing field so that women have the same opportunities for education and performance as men....
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Teaching Girls
A small school in a southern city where girls were usually curbed physically or mentally, the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls and its teachers did not deal in... limits. My years there started me on my way as a writer....
Galentine’s Day and Our Great Leaders
My only problem with this pleasantly mad-cap idea is that it seems to focus on friendships between ladies......
Caught in the Act
One of the most notable differences between women and men in public life is we seem to know better how to avoid scandal....
Start by Getting Them in the Room
The opening of the U.S Congress, two days ago, showed us what happens when we are in the room....
Bare-Breasted
Let's begin the New Year with a salute to an astonishing woman, Agnes Sorel, the "acknowledged mistress" of the French king Charles the Seventh....
Victoria’s Secret Goes Down
I look for changes that seem small, even ridiculously small, and yet may herald changed attitudes in this slow-moving country of ours....
New Mexico
Nearly Lost
The first issue, of course, is to level the playing field so that women have the same opportunities for education and performance as men....
Two Spirits
Two Spirits have always walked among us, unrecognized and, at least in the past, often reviled....
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
The Welcoming of Friends
Over the twenty-seven years I've lived in Santa Fe, many people have come and many people have gone....
The Mustard Seed
As a child, I planted seeds every spring and knew how likely it was that, when I forgot to water them, they would never spring from the dry earth....
What Part
Sometimes I'm grateful for the old Roman Catholic doctrine of Original Sin that held there is no innocent being, even a newborn, since Eve's fall....
The Ruts Remain
Bells are ringing all over Santa Fe and the Plaza is blindingly bright with tree-strung lights......
Pip in Winter
My black dog Pip, now three and a half years old, fears not cold, snow or rain. For him it is all an adventure....
First Snow
I will always miss the sensation of diving off the slope, at ten thousand feet, and sailing down the longest run with big curving sweeps of my skis....
Kentucky
Sometimes It Takes a While
Several decades ago, I became aware of the work and life of Enid Yandell, a Kentucky-born, Paris educated sculptor whose statues I used to see at various ceremonial points in Louisville. This early twentieth-century woman artist, although acclaimed in her time, seemed to be forgotten. Yandell was one of a group of talented women artists ...
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Teaching Girls
A small school in a southern city where girls were usually curbed physically or mentally, the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls and its teachers did not deal in... limits. My years there started me on my way as a writer....
My Mother’s Cookbook
I did make some progress... although probably my greatest accomplishment was mayonnaise made in a blender....
Spring Planting
The Horsetooth Corn will grow vigorously to remind us all that fertility, growth and abundance is still possible....
A Few of My Favorite Things
I am particularly blessed in these special places that seem to have come into my life by chance or luck but are in fact the material manifestations of prayer....
17 Favorites of 2017
As this year comes to a close (some might say thankfully), I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2017, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Adventurer / Adventuresses
The threats we still face from the dominant culture, the insults and violence, have not stopped us. We still go for the outer air....
My Family
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
The Mustard Seed
As a child, I planted seeds every spring and knew how likely it was that, when I forgot to water them, they would never spring from the dry earth....
My Mother’s Cookbook
I did make some progress... although probably my greatest accomplishment was mayonnaise made in a blender....
Apples
Like the medieval desert mendicants, holy men who lived their lives in remote caves and were sometimes fed by ravens, Will had long ago lost any interest in possessions, or any taste for food....
17 Favorites of 2017
As this year comes to a close (some might say thankfully), I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2017, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Acting Christmas
Something in our basic human nature calls for ritual celebration with other people, even if the other people are strangers....
Tiny Little Things
The value of the collection I keep on the top of my bureau seems suddenly, mysteriously clear....
Life Is What Leaps
How to keep a spark of hope alive in our so-called democratic process? How not to drop into numbness and apathy?...