Ever wondered why there’s no female voice as bold, erotic, unflinching, and revealing as Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, or Philip Roth? There is. It belongs to Susie Bright.
In this stunning and courageous coming-of-age story, Susie Bright opens her heart and her life. From fearful Irish Catholic Girl Scout to gun-toting teenage revolutionary—and finally the "The Avatar of American Erotica" (NYTimes)—Bright’s life story is shaped as much by America’s sexual awakening as the national sexual landscape was altered by Bright herself.
In Big Sex Little Death, Bright introduces us to her influences and experiences, including her early involvement with notorious high school radicals The Red Tide as well as the magazine she co-founded in the 1980s, On Our Backs—the first-ever erotic magazine created by women, which turned the lesbian and bisexual community upside down before it took the "straight" world by storm.
Big Sex Little Death is an explosive yet intimate memoir that’s pure Susie: bold, free-spirited, unpredictable—larger than life, yet utterly true to life.
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"Susie Bright is a one-woman counterculture, a teenaged socialist revolutionary turned Reagan-era sexual freedom fighter. In this lively, bittersweet memoir, she recounts a life full of political and erotic adventures and betrayals, a life at once deeply subversive and totally American, defined as it is by the idea that people should be free to express and pursue their own visions of happiness, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the prigs and scolds among us." — Tom Perotta, author of Little Children and Election
"Susie Bright's real life is just as compelling—more compelling—than her sex life. And that's saying something." — Dan Savage
"I have a very scary feeling Susie Bright is not making any of this up. Guns, drugs, threesomes, socialist factionalism, a stabbing . . . all before she got her G.E.D.?" — Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
"Big Sex Little Death is subtle, hot, enthralling, raw and tender—I loved it. Susie Bright is a national treasure." — Josh Marshall, Editor and Publisher, Talking Points Memo
"The best-named writer in America, Susie Bright has written a witty, wise, and enlightening memoir." — Erica Jong
About the Author
Susie Bright is the author of national bestsellers, Full Exposure and The Sexual State of the Union—as well as The Best American Erotica and Herotica series, which ushered in women’s erotic publishing. She the host of Audible’s In Bed With Susie Bright, the beloved and longest running sex education show in the history of broadcasting. She was co-founder and editor of On Our Backs magazine, and was the first journalist to cover erotic cinema and the porn business in the mainstream press. A progenitor of the sex-positive movement, Bright taught the first university course on pornography, and brought lasting sexual influence to her role in films like Bound and The Celluloid Closet. She has one daughter, Aretha Bright, and lives with her partner, Jon Bailiff. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California.
I've admired Susie Bright's candid, direct, and wide open sexual expression for a great many years, from her early writing in the lesbian tabloid "On Our Backs" right through to her current blog [...]. Here is a woman who took on a number of risky and controversial causes, especially the celebration of a bawdy and earthy female bisexuality with a primarily lesbian identity, against the anti-sex prophets of what I would call the right wing of the feminist movement--people like Andrea Dworkin and Katherine McKinnon and much of the male-bashing academic feminist establishment. Dworkin, who died in 2005, once argued that heterosexual intercourse itself was a form of rape.
I'm also one of her thousands of Facebook friends and regard her site as one of the best portals to the good things going on on the internet--politically, socially, and erotically. Like me she regards most internet pornography as tediously bad and knows how to distinguish between honesty and in-authenticity in sexuality better than anyone that I know. As a long time editor of "The Best American Erotica" and many other collections of sexually-oriented writing, she also knows how to distinguish between good imaginative writing and porno hack jobs.
She has now published a memoir called "Big Sex, Little Death," and it is a revelation, because it goes beyond the persona created in her erotica and gives us a detailed portrait of the cerebral, radical, flesh and blood person she is and where the components that make up her identity come from.
Susie Bright, the name is perfect for her--kind of oozing intelligence and light--is the only child of Elizabeth Halloran and William Bright, born in Arlington, Virginia in the late 1950's.... Her parents were academics and separated shortly after her birth, then divorced. She remembers a high school English teacher who attributed her "out of line" behavior to the fact that she was the product of a broken home. In the years since, a "broken home" has become more the norm than the exception, and the phrase itself seems as antiquated as eight track cassettes. Nonetheless, she was deeply affected by her parents' divorce, especially by her mother's erratic and isolated ways. She describes a horrific event early along when her mother drove her to the edge of the iced-over Saskatchewan River after the twelve-year old Susie had lost her glasses and was told by her mom, "you won't need them in the bottom of the river," and then when the confused child asked where they were going responded "I'm driving us into the river."
It's no wonder that Bright writes "If you were to ask me what the happiest days of my life were, I would say the day that my daughter was born...and the first week I spent reunited with my dad." This happened when she was in her early teens and her mother had asked her father to take care of her permanently. Living with her father was liberating. Both her sex life and her political life began at the tender age of fourteen; she tells us casually on page 85 that after she became involved with a socialist high school paper appropriately called The Red Tide, "I also started having sex. Not with anyone at school, but with the socialists, the ones with all the ideas in their heads." Her political and sexual identities were formed early and have been sustained in unison ever since.
"Big Sex, Little Death" is divided into three sections--the first dealing with her childhood, the second with her adolescence, and the third with all of her adulthood. This gives the book a bit of a skewered feel. Two thirds of the volume deals with a bit more than one third of her life, while the last third of it covers some thirty-three years. (Bright turns 53 this year). This may be because the last third covers the Susie Bright we generally know about--one of the founders of "On Our Backs" and the editor or author of a shelf-full of erotic writings. She was "present at the creation" of a new kind of feminist-based sensuality and a witness to the San Francisco-based sexual turmoil of the 80s and 90s. She chronicles both the AIDS epidemic and the sexual revolution in some detail, and the devastation that both left in their wake. We know a great deal about the former, but less about the latter, and it's surprising to encounter the litany of deaths and suicides associated with the young women who worked in San Francisco sex clubs (p. 243) as well of being reminded of the fratricide committed by Jim Mitchell, one of the famous Mitchell Brothers who ran the notorious O'Farrell Theater in the 70's and 80's and produced porno films including "Beyond the Green Door," which was one of the biggest porno-pop hits of the period.
The only thing we don't get to find out too much about is her long-term relationship with the man in her life (Jon) and particular details about her interactions with her daughter Aretha, now a young woman. Yes, she does offer some good advice about parenthood: "Don't hit them. Don't lie to them. Respect their privacy and your own," but there's little more. Well, I certainly respect her right to privacy in these areas, but many of her readers might like to know about how it was for Aretha growing up with such a sexually explicit mom, and whether her ongoing connection with a man in her life has made her monogamous, or if their relationship is an open one. These seem important omissions for a woman who has made most of her life an open book, but I'm sure there are more than a few pages yet uncut.
Nonetheless, the best thing about Susie Bright's writing is the clarity and vividness of her style as well as it's very personal tone. She has the gift of writing as if she's sitting across a table from you and talking with you casually, even about outrageous things like her mother's threatening to kill her and commit suicide and having threesomes at age fifteen with her girlfriend Danielle, age fourteen, with a series of "older men." Listen: "I felt safe and bold with Danielle--I'd do things with her I'd never do by myself. We could seduce anyone; we could get out of--or into--any situation that we wished. When we were alone she told me that my kissing was terrible, that Americans didn't know how to kiss. She ran a bath for us, and when we got into the tub to practice, we turned on the shower, too, the water pouring down our heads....Men were intimidated by us, which we thought was funny. Funny, but great leverage. For the first couple of months of my sex life, I was too intimidated to do anything alone with a guy--Danielle was my big dog, my fearless leader, the one I could temper and reason with. I loved her. Sex with her, alone, made me shiver. We never talked about it." I quote this at length to give you a sense of the flavor of Bright's precise, talkative, and unadorned prose. Simple declarative sentences, precise detail, and secretive matters you feel like she is sharing just with you. Of course she isn't, but that's the illusion created by this kind of exactitude. This is unquestionably Bright's best and most important book.Read more ›
It's not often you read a memoir where more than half the book has rolled by and the author has not yet reached the ripe old age of 17. Indeed, 3/4ths of Big Sex Little Death has pinballed down Bright's Lombard Street life before college reaches 2nd gear. This is Susie Bright. The sex, the love of art and truth, the self discovery, the justice and family thing--it's all on fire here in a delightfully naughty history lesson. Yet the guns and the blood in her tale, even the bullhorn drone and the human seed running down her teenage leg and life remain eclipsed by her passion for the simple call of truth telling.
Yes, and the mom thing. Her station as daughter and mom in this life continues to set her apart as a thinker and writer in the realm of sexual politics and publishing. Among sex talkers and writers aplenty these day she's one of a handful who have braved motherhood and lived to tell the sex part of the story openly.
I found her childhood account uncommon only in the severity with which she embraced it all, finding a way to survive with a heart childlike and open. Indeed, I was surprised to learn that it was her success with thin skin poetry that opened the first door for her in publishing. A great encouragement here for young writers. Yet the mom thing will always define Susie Bright for me. It's how she sees herself to this day. Having one, being one. She's a true traditional untraditionalist. We listen to her because she lives where we all have lived as sons and daughters. But she does it all never selling out her eroticism from youth to middle age.
Perhaps the funniest part of this hardbound book is its color: black and white. A little joke no doubt.... If a world abides anywhere in the universe as black and white, it's no place where this woman lives. She's always been every ounce nuance, every bit color and question mark. Even when she pontificates away I read her as one open to ideas and a possible new way yet of looking at things.
But having a daughter remains the key kernel of madness in her art and life for me I think. Maybe because I've one too, near in age. Also, as politically incorrect as it might be in her field as sexpert and lesbian pioneer she does not hide that it was the positive masculine input of her father, Bill Bright, that remains an anchor for this literary storm we call Susie. Oh, and for heaven's sake, this out-there lesbian trail blazer woman has a long time serious male friend, Jon, an "all but married" life partner relationship no less. She never apologizes. She just loves.
However full and fantastic this tale of her youth, I still get that this erotic literary nut tree woman is never going to stray far from her Irish Catholic roots. It's an underground current that nourishes her writing and sex and commitment to motherhood. I'm sure she knows this. Again, there's a nun somewhere to be sent flowers for this.
What stood out for me in BSLD is how she kept reinventing herself; and how chance and circumstance played a big part. She never seemed to let bitterness whack her down for even a whole day. Raised by a whack job mom who tried to undue her, she loves. In family, in business, in the world of friends, she is betrayed. All these players bring Judas to her again and again yet she harbors no bitter seed, just that platonic Susannahism where wonder remains the beginning of all wisdom and philosophy. No doubt Big Sex Little Death is just Part One of the Susie wonder woman tale. This woman can sure tell a story. I await Part Two.Read more ›
Though she has written other books, and has been open about sexual matters (and eager to help others out with sexual issues; she wasn't called Susie Sexpert for nothing), Susie Bright has capped her previous works now with heartfelt and illuminating recollections in _Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir_ (Seal Press). Bright is one of the people who has shaped current American sexuality. She was an advisor for (and had a cameo role in) the Wachowski Brothers lesbian-themed film _Bound_, for instance, and helped found the first US magazine of lesbian erotica. Though she has produced her own lesbian porn, and was enthusiastically lesbian in her twenties, she has been out as a bisexual ever since she was a teenager, and at 32 she had a daughter and even settled down with a guy. There is plenty of coverage of her sexual exploits here, and some of the encounters are steamy. There aren't enough of them, however, to repay the effort of just flipping the pages to find "the good parts." Instead, Bright has written mostly about her extraordinarily difficult upbringing and her years as a youthful activist for socialism. The time she was behind the counter at the Good Vibrations toy store is here, as is her founding and editing of the magazine _On Our Backs_, and her heartbreak of letting that effort go. There's not much about her advice columns, or her feminist reviews of erotic films, or her current weekly audio program _In Bed with Susie Bright_, or her website, or her blog. She's been busy; this funny, wide-eyed, and poignant memoir is bound to get sequels.
Bright was born in 1958, with parents she now says, looking back, "were far more radical than I am, because of basic changes in their generation." She is proud of both parents, even her mother who abused her.... They died a few years ago, but Bright's book is dedicated to them both. In high school, Bright discovered sex and socialism. She began to write for the underground high school newspaper _The Red Tide_. She left school early to to work as a full-time labor organizer within the International Socialists. There were blue-collar organizers quoting Marx and Lenin, and enthusiastic coitus with both sexes to help storm the barriers, and Teamsters and other drivers to organize. The movement, however, was schismatic, and kicked her out; if not, would she still be trying to turn truckers into socialists instead of trying to bring everyone sexual enlightenment? It was time for her to go back to school, this time to college, and eventually to the "feminist vibrator store," Good Vibrations, where she loved interacting with customers. Lost ladies might come in and say something like, "My husband has died and I will never achieve climax again," or, "The therapist has told me I am sexually dysfunctional and sent me here." She went on to found _On Our Backs_, which she edited from 1984 to 1991. It featured pornography, leather, fetishes, and celebrations of female lust and eroticism. It was not in line with the feminism of the time. Bright has called herself a "sex-positive feminist," in contrast with the ones who put out publications such as _Off Our Backs_ (note the difference a couple of letters makes) and who thought that pornography hurt women or promoted violence against them. Bright has always been as unapologetic about enjoying pornography (she edits collections of it) as she has about enjoying sex. Eventually it came time for her to quit the magazine, and she writes of the difficult decision movingly because she left explicitly to take care of her daughter. "I did get pregnant unexpectedly. I spent the first thirty-one years of my life being either a lesbian or a complete martinet about birth control, and all of a sudden, I got sloppy. It was out of character." The worst part was worrying about her temper, about keeping a vow that her daughter would never be hit or have the truth hidden from her. She called the daughter Aretha, and hilariously her parents both approved, because they knew the name came from the Greek meaning "the very best." They knew nothing about popular music: "Only Bill and Elizabeth, of all the people in the world, would respond to the name Aretha with the enthusiasm of the antiquities."
Aretha seems to have turned out well, and it would be nice to know the details of how she came to terms with her mother's openness about sexuality and about her past, but the current memoir winds up with Bright, Aretha, and Jon heading to Santa Cruz. (She met Jon because she needed her tires changed, shortly before she became pregnant, and they continue to be partners.) There will be more to this story, and I am going to be happy to tune into any next volume.Read more ›
