The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke
“Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.”— Gloria Steinem
“In her fascinating book about tobacco heiress Doris Duke, whose net worth had ballooned to $1.2 billion by her death in 1993, Bingham gets at how inherited wealth liberates women but also burdens them.”— The National Book Review, "5 HOT BOOKS"
“In this illuminating biography, Bingham (The Blue Box) chronicles the life of philanthropist and tobacco heiress Doris Duke (1912–1993)... Bingham is a generous biographer in this exacting, measured work.”— Publishers Weekly
“Bingham adds a trove of new material to the Duke oeuvre, including revealing quotations from letters and details of daily life on Duke’s many estates. ”— The New York Times
Prefer text? Read the transcript.
Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader
This rich and accomplished collection showcases the range of a writer at the height of her powers. From the complex stories of artistic influence and the exhilaration and fright of solitude, to the incendiary rage of a betrayed young wife who sacrifices everything for revenge, to the struggles for independence of the three women who surrounded Ezra Pound like subservient stars, these fictions seize the reader’s attention while slashing stereotypes.
This Sallie Bingham Reader captures the spirit of the author’s illustrious writing career via short stories, a novella, and a play.
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 latest book, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, is now available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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.
Sallie's Latest
Where Are the Religious Leaders
I may have missed their presence at the demonstrations that have been happening all over the country, most recently in Louisville, Kentucky, but I doubt it. ...
Starting Something
I attended some of those early meetings, since my then-husband was one of the founding group, but I don't remember venturing an opinion. In those days, the opinions of young women weren't usually regarded....
Intemperate
We are riven, today, not only by righteous concerns for justice on all levels but by the need to express those concerns in very loud voices...
There Was an Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket
What we are all obliged to do now: to join in sweeping the cobwebs. There is a little time and a little space, provided by the pandemic, for such a sweeping......
The Best of the Best: Small Town Newspapers
This past week brought about the demise of the Los Alamos Monitor here in New Mexico, done away with by its owner Landmark, with the usual excuses about declining advertising....
Claudio
I saw Claudio the other day, waiting for his order of barbecued ribs at the van that sits these days of the pandemic in a parking lot......
What’s Good About It
As we head into the sixth—or is it the seventh month?—of the pandemic, I'm reflecting on what sweet juice can be extracted from these sour grapes....
Smoke
It happens every summer during these years of drought, and we should be thankful it didn't happen until last week......
The Silver Swan
And Now, Margaret Sanger
Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement."...
What We Can’t Say Now
We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics....
Clearing Out
As I put my files, copies of the originals at Duke, into boxes for the shredder, I glance at a few that came as such pleasant surprises when I first found them eight or nine years ago....
The Delights of Research
There is nothing like opening a file box, with some unknown's penciled label at the top, and diving into an absolutely unpredictable collection of letters, notes, interviews—anything Doris Duke, in my case, decided to save....
“The Swan” Launches!
I am so grateful to all my readers and potential readers and I look forward to being in touch with each and every one of you....
Doris Duke is Born
What do I hope my biography will accomplish? Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke....
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
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....
Doris Duke
And Now, Margaret Sanger
Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement."...
What We Can’t Say Now
We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics....
A Queen Exiled at Home
If we treat ourselves as the queens we are, the example of Liliʻuokalani may inspire us....
The Delights of Research
There is nothing like opening a file box, with some unknown's penciled label at the top, and diving into an absolutely unpredictable collection of letters, notes, interviews—anything Doris Duke, in my case, decided to save....
Doris Duke is Born
What do I hope my biography will accomplish? Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke....
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
Legacy of Harm
Doris Duke must at least have wondered if her generosity, in all its forms, could ever compensate for the destructive effects of nicotine addiction. ...
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....
Writing
Starting Something
I attended some of those early meetings, since my then-husband was one of the founding group, but I don't remember venturing an opinion. In those days, the opinions of young women weren't usually regarded....
Intemperate
We are riven, today, not only by righteous concerns for justice on all levels but by the need to express those concerns in very loud voices...
Starting Again
The rest of us have to find a way to write bold and glittering and daring fiction without their form of fairy gold....
What We Can’t Say Now
We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics....
I Can’t Teach You to Write
What I can inspire, if not teach, is the appetite for putting words down on the page that has been my theme and my salvation since I was a child....
Change of Pace: My Master’s Horse
I'm going to treat you—and it will be a treat—to bits and pieces of what I really want to write....
Clearing Out
As I put my files, copies of the originals at Duke, into boxes for the shredder, I glance at a few that came as such pleasant surprises when I first found them eight or nine years ago....
Treason on Stage
It was Ezra Pound's personal story of committing treason against the U.S. during World War Two and his even longer-lasting treason against the three women who loved him that drove me to writing this play....
Next Comes
I like to write about risk... and risk, by its very nature, seems best suited to shorter forms....
Women
Housedress
The housedress and its definition mark a shift in what we expect of women in the midst of this pandemic....
Brass Belles: The Missouri Ladies Marching Band
As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, I am remembering the role that music, as well as words, played in this extraordinary triumph....
Hats
The Peruvian hat makers shown in this film made by Erica Nguyen, a fellow at the Women's International Study Center here in Santa Fe, are part of an ancient tradition....
And Now, Margaret Sanger
Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement."...
How Libels Take Hold
Hearsay, sometimes passed down for three hundred years, sticks—especially if it is negative, and especially if it adheres to a woman....
Power Corrupts
Are women somehow exempt from the deleterious influence of power? We have so seldom exercised visible power in the past that the question hasn't been asked....
The Female Economy
It is important for the 9% of U.S. women who belong to what the Harvard study calls Elite/Independent to step up to leadership roles....
A Queen Exiled at Home
If we treat ourselves as the queens we are, the example of Liliʻuokalani may inspire us....
Being Needed Doesn’t Mean Being Well Paid
I was raised by one of the millions of women who then as well as now fill the most essential U.S. jobs....
In A Dark Time
How ironic and, yet, how strangely fitting, that this flying virus arrives at the middle of Women's History month and just before the April 7 publication of The Silver Swan......
New Mexico
Intemperate
We are riven, today, not only by righteous concerns for justice on all levels but by the need to express those concerns in very loud voices...
The Best of the Best: Small Town Newspapers
This past week brought about the demise of the Los Alamos Monitor here in New Mexico, done away with by its owner Landmark, with the usual excuses about declining advertising....
Claudio
I saw Claudio the other day, waiting for his order of barbecued ribs at the van that sits these days of the pandemic in a parking lot......
What’s Good About It
As we head into the sixth—or is it the seventh month?—of the pandemic, I'm reflecting on what sweet juice can be extracted from these sour grapes....
Smoke
It happens every summer during these years of drought, and we should be thankful it didn't happen until last week......
Privilege and the Privy
If there is any excuse for privilege—and I don't think there's any hope of eliminating it in the near or long future—it's that inheritors have an obligation to preserve land....
Loving Indians
One of the saddest effects of COVID for me is the closing of our neighboring eighteen northern pueblos, especially as we are in the summer season of harvest dances....
Hats
The Peruvian hat makers shown in this film made by Erica Nguyen, a fellow at the Women's International Study Center here in Santa Fe, are part of an ancient tradition....
Summer Evening
After supper on these warm evenings in Santa Fe, my dog Pip usually insists on a walk. ...
Kentucky
Wolf Pen and the World
We never escape our past or our responsibility for our past, as we never escape the future we have agreed to create....
Heroes in Breeches
I didn't think the horseback-riding British midwives I worked for years ago in the Kentucky mountains were heroes....
In A Dark Time
How ironic and, yet, how strangely fitting, that this flying virus arrives at the middle of Women's History month and just before the April 7 publication of The Silver Swan......
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....
My Family
There Was an Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket
What we are all obliged to do now: to join in sweeping the cobwebs. There is a little time and a little space, provided by the pandemic, for such a sweeping......
How Libels Take Hold
Hearsay, sometimes passed down for three hundred years, sticks—especially if it is negative, and especially if it adheres to a woman....
Dancing for the New Year
I'll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal....
And It Does Go On
I am devoutly grateful for the lives of Will's two older brothers who have mourned him with me and yet managed to go on....
The Secret Bunker
A big resort in the mountains of West Virginia, called The Greenbrier, figured often in my great-grandmother Sallie's tales of her girlhood in Richmond....
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....
