Little Brother, Sallie Bingham
Readers familiar with Sallie Bingham’s 1989 memoir, Passion and Prejudice, will remember her provocative chronicle of the Bingham family saga, cited by Gloria Steinem as “a major step toward feminist change and democracy.” In Little Brother, she reflects on just one of her siblings: the youngest son Jonathan and his all-too brief life. The book begins with a count she calls her “dreadful list” of nine close relatives who died by accident, suicide, overdose, exposure to the elements, and electrocution, all before the age of 50. Jonathan was only twenty-two years old when he climbed a pole, hoping to rig up some lighting for a barn party and, by some fluke, grabbed a live wire. But even before his fatal fall to the ground, the boy suffered from insecurity, isolation, and difficulty relating to his large family. Bingham draws from archived material, chief among them the young man’s journal and letters. She writes his short history with obvious affection and tenderness, along with more than a dash of survival guilt. Little Brother is a moving and honest new work.
Additional Info
Sallie Bingham is the author of fifteen books, including most recently Treason: a Sallie Bingham Reader; Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke; The Blue Box: Three Lives in Letters; and Mending: New & Selected Short Stories. The latter collection won a Gold Medal in Fiction from Foreword Magazine in 2012 and she’s been included in both Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Bingham is founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History at Duke University, publisher of The American Voice, from 1989 to 1998 and Book Editor at The Courier Journal from 1983-1989. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, along with many other honors. She lives in Santa Fe with her dog Pip.
PRAISE FOR LITTLE BROTHER:
"Sallie Bingham's tragic memoir Little Brother is an instant American classic, today's equivalent to Margaret King's account of the death of a privileged Venetian renaissance child."
—Colin Eisler, Professor Emeritus, NYU and author of Masterworks in Berlin
"Little Brother is an unsettling and intriguing memoir that skillfully locates wealth and power to the dynamics of patriarchal family structures and history of the U.S. and hopefully beyond for the keen readers."
—Ozlem Ezer, author of Syrian Women Refugees: Personal Accounts of Transition
“Brava, Sallie Bingham, for an intimate and courageous portrait of the complexities of her family in all its pose, love and need for emotional distractions. This compelling personal story is set against the backdrop of decades of world history, and in part reflects the American character, its values, and thus the consequences. I was totally immersed.”
—Joan Brooks Baker, author of The Magnolia Code
“As Sallie Bingham tells it, her brother Jonathan was a deeply sensitive boy and young man who was ravaged by inherited privilege and familial neglect. In this riveting memoir, she searches for the meaning in her little brother’s sad, truncated life. I couldn't put the book down.”
—Polly Howells
PAST PRAISE FOR SALLIE BINGHAM:
“There are many accounts of the Bingham family saga, but no other by someone who was there. For the first time, a gifted writer born into a family of inherited wealth and power takes us with her behind the doors of that patriarchal hothouse. Passion and Prejudice is a major step toward feminist change and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem
“Selected from five decades’ work, [the stories of Mending] distill the mysterious glow that lives emanate as they recede into the past, and confirm Bingham’s place in the front rank of practitioners of this elusive genre.”
—The New Yorker
“Fans of women’s history and devotees of Southern family sagas will enjoy taking this detour into nonfiction territory.”
—Library Journal
“Bingham’s work, including favorites such as “The Wedding” and “Sweet Peas,” remains sharp and deliciously unsettling, ripe for discovery by a new generation of readers.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review