SISTERS ,SAINTS AND SIBYLS - NAN GOLDIN

The wrong things are kept secret, and that destroys people. My sister was a victim of all that, but she knew how to fight back. Her rebellion was a starting point for my own. She showed me the way.
—Nan Goldin

In 1958, Goldin’s elder sister, Barbara Holly Goldin, was sent to a psychiatric detention center at age twelve. She spent time in and out of such facilities for the next six years. Barbara was accused of “acting out, open defiance, sexually provocative behavior, association with undesirable friends, [and being] loud and coarse in speech.” Reports state that she went on dates with an older Black man, appeared to be confused about her sexual identity, and refused to shave her legs. Barbara stirred up a perfect storm of middle-class, midcentury fears around race, sexuality, and gender roles.

Goldin was a witness to the physical and psychic abuse that Barbara suffered and that her family tried to conceal. Barbara’s death by suicide in 1965, at the age of eighteen, was a defining event in Goldin’s life, prompting her to rebel against and run away from her living situation at the time, and the remainder of Sisters, Saints, Sibyls describes how she found her tribe of fellow rebels. She shows us her own experience with addiction, confinement, and self-harm, and that with living comes not only maturity and change, but also loss and pain

ISBN : 9780500031049