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
Unbearable Truth
When I came out of the Roundabout Theatre production of Arthur Miller's play, All My Sons, I immediately faced an unbearable truth....
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....
The Double Cottonwood
I find myself involved in three groups to my great pleasure and satisfaction, this after many decades avoiding groups as a waste of time....
She Is Burning
Notre Dame has always seemed to me a dark, brooding and august female presence presiding over Paris....
Faith
Are we entering a time of converging faiths, offering hope to some, or only another giant step in the widespread agnosticism that seems at times a sure forerunner of despair?...
Einstein with the Hopis
Mileva... may have contributed to her husband's discoveries; in letters he alludes to them as "ours" although the question is unanswerable for lack of evidence....
Letting Go of Apache Mesa Ranch
Continuing to own an unproductive piece of land at the end of a terrible road broke through several layers of my dreams—or where they delusions?...
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
The Self-Realization Fellowship and Doris Duke
If there is a chance, and I think there is one, that Doris was touched and perhaps even changed by her connection, whatever it may prove to have been, with the Self-Realization Fellowship, her miseries would have been if not reduced, placed in a realistic context, uniting her with her fellows....
Happy Birthday, Doris
Sometimes a choice of a name without family connotations means an attempt to break loose from the past....
New Year’s Day
I am wishing all of you, friends, acquaintances and strangers, who are kind enough to read these thoughts, the most beneficial, peaceful and fruitful new year—a cold winter with lots of snow, a spring full of bloom....
To Be of Use: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection
A great collection is always based on a passion. It is not random. It grows from a strong root....
Something Has Gone Wrong
Something has gone wrong with this country, and I don’t know how or exactly when....
Doris Duke: Getting Dirty
Getting dirty as a child allowed Doris Duke to develop into the daring woman she became. I wonder how many eight year old girls today would be allowed to wander on the beach in a dirty shift, with mud up to their knees?...
Scandal, Rumor and Innuendo: Doris Duke and Popular Imagination
Almost the only question people asked me about her is, “Did Doris Duke marry her butler?” No, she did not. But does that question really matter, in a long, complex and accomplished life?...
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
The Double Cottonwood
I find myself involved in three groups to my great pleasure and satisfaction, this after many decades avoiding groups as a waste of time....
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....
Women
The Double Cottonwood
I find myself involved in three groups to my great pleasure and satisfaction, this after many decades avoiding groups as a waste of time....
The End Is the Beginning
Women's History Month ends today—one month out of the twelve to represent more than half of the world's people—with the hope and the promise that we are just beginning....
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....
New Mexico
The Double Cottonwood
I find myself involved in three groups to my great pleasure and satisfaction, this after many decades avoiding groups as a waste of time....
Faith
Are we entering a time of converging faiths, offering hope to some, or only another giant step in the widespread agnosticism that seems at times a sure forerunner of despair?...
Einstein with the Hopis
Mileva... may have contributed to her husband's discoveries; in letters he alludes to them as "ours" although the question is unanswerable for lack of evidence....
Letting Go of Apache Mesa Ranch
Continuing to own an unproductive piece of land at the end of a terrible road broke through several layers of my dreams—or where they delusions?...
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....
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....
My Family
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....
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....