JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Larry Benjamin, author of What Binds Us
(Carina Press)
What Binds Us is, at its heart, an inter-racial love story although race does not play a significant role. Because the characters’ difference in race and social class and sexuality creates no conflict, the story becomes a universal story—of love, of loss, of family.
When, at 17, Thomas-Edward escapes southern New Jersey and the tyranny of his parents love, he thinks he is ready for anything. Anything quickly arrives in the form of one Donovan Dion “Dondi” Whyte who is like no one he has ever met before and who introduces him into “a looking-glass world in which everything was familiar yet larger, more exquisite, more precious than anything he had ever known.”
Dondi is sophisticated, passionate, urbane—the man Thomas-Edward has dreamed of loving since childhood and yet it is not Dondi but rather his brother, Matthew, in whom he finds the love he has dreamed of.
Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write What Binds Us?
Larry Benjamin: I was inspired to write it after seeing Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia” which I thought didn’t do a very good job of portraying the Continue reading 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Larry Benjamin, author of What Binds Us
