Sallie Bingham

  • Events
  • Blog
    • Doris Duke
    • Best of 2024
    • My Favorites
    • Full Archives
    • Writing
    • Women
    • Philanthropy
    • My Family
    • Politics
    • Kentucky
    • New Mexico
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Theater
    • Religion
  • Books & Plays
    • Doris Duke
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Plays
    • Poetry
    • Anthologies
  • Writing
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Plays
    • Translations
  • Resources
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Print
    • Biography
  • About
    • Contact
 
You are here: Home / Women / Grandmother, Mother, Daughter

Grandmother, Mother, Daughter

February 15th, 2012 by Sallie Bingham in Women Leave a Comment

Or
Buy Yourself Something For Valentine’s Day

Whitney Houston’s death last Saturday alerted me to a part of her story: the roles played in her rise to fame by her mother, Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who sang back up to Aretha Franklin, whose triumphant hymns to women’s independence heralded my political coming of age. Aretha was Whitney’s godmother.

This matriarchy, source of strength and grace, is rarely recognized as such. It’s reconstructed, in a far different culture, in the story of the Santa Clara Pueblo painter, Margarete Bagshaw, whose transcendent exhibit at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture here in Santa Fe pays explicit tribute to her mother, painter Helen Hardin, and her grandmother, the artist, Pablito Velarde—who was told by the boys at the Indian School here that she should go home and bake bread.

In one of Bagshaw’s enormous, brilliant canvases, three robed katchinas, their powerful iconic masks centered by round mouths that seem to be singing, or shouting, represent Bagshaw towering between her mother and grandmother, sharing their power and their skill.

Whitney Houston’s death last Saturday alerted me to a part of her story: the roles played in her rise to fame by her mother, Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who sang back up to Aretha Franklin, whose triumphant hymns to women’s independence heralded my political coming of age. Aretha was Whitney’s godmother. This matriarchy, source of strength and grace, is rarely recognized as such.

Yet in my Anglo family, as in many others I know, the link between grandmother, mother and daughter, or daughter-in-law, is frail to the point of disappearance.

I believe this is because in certain white, middle and upper-class families, we women are repeating the lesson learned over the centuries of our disempowerment: that our very survival depends on men.

Of course this is no longer literally true, as women begin to dominate, numerically, in advanced education and even make progress toward the top in some of the professions and in politics.

But the fear, and the faith, remain: a man will always have a paycheck—a faith that should have been severely undermined by the current recession—and will afford us various kinds of protection based on his presumably larger size and strength.

I see this fear and this faith repeated in the Valentine Day’s advertisements which feature a man buying a piece of jewelry or a box of chocolates for a woman, leading me to wonder whether we women ever buy such baubles for ourselves.

I also see this every day in the way we pair: younger brides with older grooms (even when the groom is old enough to be out of the question entirely); taller husbands with shorter wives; the woman hiking a mountain trail here, always behind her man.

Whether the men in question are able, or willing, to provide what we expect them to provide is of course open to debate. But in any case, we cannot hope for powerful women artists until we reclaim our matriarchal lineage, including memories like Margarete Bagshaw’s, of a childhood where meals didn’t appear on time and the house was a mess.

Bad mothering, anyone?

The other kind of matriarchy—and there are many kinds—is represented for me in the house here called informally The House of the Three Wise Women, built and maintained by three generations of women collectors and painters, supported by a large fortune, generated by the great-grandfather but ably augmented over the years by his daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter.

The house, supported in part by the foundation these women established, is to become an international center for women scholars and independent researchers in the three areas these women supported: business, the arts, and conservation.

The idea is barely born, and it will be years before the center is funded and begins to extend its possibilities beyond a small group of grant recipients.

But the very existence of the house itself, a treasury of early twentieth century Hispanic and Anglo art, is a living example of the kind of creation which three generations of women who share a vision can bring into existence.

But of course they hired other women to take care of the childrearing.

Share
Tweet
Share
Buffer
0 Shares

In Women grandmother mother daughter Witney Houston Valentine's Day

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.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

You might also like

  • Photo of a 1930
    Valentine’s Day: The Girl in the Red Velvet Dress
    A few days ago when I was poking in one of my closets, I found a battered old scrapbook from the 1930, a big collection of greeting cards spasted onto the scrapbook’s yellowish pages....
  • Susan B. Anthony by Saroney
    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......
  • Photo of the Statue of Liberty
    Reasons to Hope
    It's important not to be ploughed under by the chaos and intemperance in Washington. We don't live in that swamp, and we don't need to allow our hopes and dreams to be drowned out by the noise....
  • Woman in sunglasses holding a skateboard
    Just Plain Too Many
    A wise Buddhist recommends that we never tell anyone how old we are for if we do, we will be folded in with the tiresome, the incontinent, the disposable....
 

Subscribe

 

Latest Comments

  • Martha White on The Fruits of the Past Five Years: “Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings: “And suddenly a light is thrown back, as when your train makes a curve, showing…” July 6th, 11:14 am
  • Nenita on The Fruits of the Past Five Years: “I like your writings, I can relate to you. If I had been persevering and seriously aware of my interests…” July 6th, 11:13 am
  • Sallie Bingham on Whose Eyes: “Thank you, James – you are correct!” June 29th, 11:19 am
  • Martha White on Feeding the Fish: “Blinkying Report:: Our neighborhood rabbits have been observed leaping into the air three or four feet off the ground. It…” June 29th, 8:10 am
  • Martha White on Whose Eyes: “Subtle. The “b” stays silent—subtle, even.” June 24th, 12:59 pm

Watch Sallie

Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

July 6th, 2025
Sallie Bingham introduces and reads from her latest work, Taken by the Shawnee.
Visiting Linda Stein

Visiting Linda Stein

March 3rd, 2025
Back on October 28th, 2008, I visited artist Linda Stein's studio in New York City and tried on a few of her handmade suits of armor.

Listen To Sallie

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

November 8th, 2024
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.
Taken by the Shawnee Reading

Taken by the Shawnee Reading

September 1st, 2024
This reading took place at The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico in August of 2024.

Upcoming Events

Jul 25
July 25th - July 27th

The 9th Annual Taos Writers Conference

SOMOS Salon & Bookshop
Taos MO
Sep 23
All day

How Daddy Lost His Ear – Garcia Street Books

Garcia Street Books
Santa Fe NM
Sep 30
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm MDT

How Daddy Lost His Ear – The Church of the Holy Faith

The Church of the Holy Faith
Santa Fe NM
View all of Sallie's events

Latest Tweets

salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
1 Jul 1940081262770708499

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

Image for the Tweet beginning: Years ago a man I Twitter feed image.
salliebingham avatar Sallie Bingham @salliebingham ·
30 Jun 1939751124925390864

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

Image for the Tweet beginning: Our wisdom outlasts kingdoms and Twitter feed image.
Load More

Recent Press

Sallie Bingham's latest is a captivating account of ancestor's ordeal
Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

“I felt she was with me” during the process of writing the book, Bingham says. “I felt I wasn’t writing anything that would have seemed to her false or unreal.”

Copyright © 2025 Sallie Bingham. All Rights Reserved.

Press Materials   —   Contact Sallie

Privacy Policy

Menu
  • Events
  • Blog
    • Doris Duke
    • Best of 2024
    • My Favorites
    • Full Archives
    • Writing
    • Women
    • Philanthropy
    • My Family
    • Politics
    • Kentucky
    • New Mexico
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Theater
    • Religion
  • Books & Plays
    • Doris Duke
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Plays
    • Poetry
    • Anthologies
  • Writing
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Plays
    • Translations
  • Resources
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Print
    • Biography
  • About
    • Contact