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You are here: Home / My Family / The Blue and White Bandana

The Blue and White Bandana

November 23rd, 2011 by Sallie Bingham in My Family, Writing, Kentucky 1 Comment

From the series: Memories that are forming my next book, The Blue Box

Exploring the process of writing my new book, The Blue Box due out in 2012 – Sallie

The Blue and White Bandana

First, there was the dagger, surely the most dramatic offering from my grandmother’s curio cabinet. Yet to me, the next item she took out was even more interesting: a blue-and-white checked cotton bandana, or scarf, stiff with embroidery.

I reached to touch it, but she held it out of my reach. Nothing from her curio cabinet could be touched, except by her, as all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren would learn.

“Look at the embroidery,” she said, spreading out the bandana. Dense, tiny silk flowers in red, gold, purple and blue covered every inch.

“Look at the embroidery,” she said, spreading out the bandana. Dense, tiny silk flowers in red, gold, purple and blue covered every inch.“On the other side, too.” She turned it over; miraculously, it seemed to me, the wrong side of the bandana was also completely covered with tiny flowers. I’d been sewing letters on a sampler, much against my will, and I knew how messy the back side of anything embroidered usually looked.

“How did she do that,” I asked.

“Well, she was Chinese,” my grandmother said, as though that explained everything. Perhaps, I thought, knowing the secrets of embroidery was like knowing the secrets of love, for my grandmother had hinted, without actually saying it, that the Chinese maiden had taught the young Naval officer, our remote ancestor, mysteries of that kind.

“He kept it for the rest of his life which was, of course, short,” she added matter-of-factly, folding up the bandana.

“What happened to him?”

“Well, after he saw the Emperor cut her in two—”

“He did?” I gasped.

“She’d been unfaithful, and that was the usual punishment,” my grandmother said, in a tone that implied that the punishment fit the crime. “After that, he was not himself for a long time, and when he came back to Richmond, his family persuaded him to get married. They thought it would fix him,” she added circumspectly.

“So he did, even though he loved the Chinese maiden?”

“Well, she was dead,” my grandmother said with great practicality, “so he married a beautiful blond girl—her family was very well off—but then on their honeymoon when she dared him to climb to the top of a tall pine (she never thought he’d do it), he climbed, and fell to his death. So you see he remained true to his lost Chinese maiden.”

She laid the bandana carefully back in the cabinet and closed the glass door with a decisive click.

“And now I’m taking you to the club for lunch. Go comb your hair.”

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In My Family, Writing, Kentucky Chinese embroidery

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Spence Porter on Facebook says

    November 23rd, 2011 at 11:24 pm

    What a wonderful story!

    Reply

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Watch Sallie

Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

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Sallie Bingham introduces and reads from her latest work, Taken by the Shawnee.
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This event was recorded November 1, 2024 in Taos, NM at SOMOS Salon & Bookshop by KCEI Radio, Red River/Taos and broadcast on November 8, 2024.
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This reading took place at The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico in August of 2024.

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Years ago a man I was in love with persuaded me to have a large fish pond dug near my studio. I think it was his attempt to be part of my necessarily solitary life there; like other such attempts it failed—and now I'm left with the fish pond! https://buff.ly/fGgnN39 #Koi #KoiPond

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Our wisdom outlasts kingdoms and democracies and tyrannies. It is for all places all people and all times. Unfortunately our wisdom can be bought, suborned, which is what I see in all the pretty women around Mr. T. "Lady Wisdom": https://buff.ly/mKAYBnf #HagiaSophia #DonaldTrump

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Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

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