Description
Book SynopsisWomen Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary performs a ground-breaking intervention by uncovering the relationship between literary cloth-working women and migration in a range of American novels across centuries. Bona demonstrates how four authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, and Adria Bernardi, innovate on pre-modern stories of weaving women in order to explore the intricate connections between handwork, resourcefulness, and mobility. Refracted through the lens of women's migratory experiences vis-à-vis cloth-working aesthetics, Women Writing Cloth examines varied aspects of sewingembroidering, quilting, and rebozo-makingas textual signifiers of mobility and preservation. Through authorial innovation, women's handwork constitutes a revolt against a devaluation of cultural heritage and a distrust of the self. Women Writing Cloth argues that literary, cloth-working women inspire paradigmatic shifts in social codes due to portable skills
Trade ReviewIn her new book on the tradition-rich trope of women’s needlework, Mary Jo Bona provides original readings of four ‘cloth-expressive’ novels dealing with migratory cultures of female resistance and creativity. This is an important book and her ‘crazy-quilt’ expertise is delightfully subversive. -- William Boelhower, Louisiana State University
Women Writing Cloth is a groundbreaking work of impressive scholarship and lucidity. Informed by an extensive command of ethnic literature and theory, migration studies, feminist scholarship and historical perspectives, this book develops relationships between needlework, verbal and visual art, and storytelling traditions across a broad spectrum of ethnicities and transnational experiences. It is a stunning contribution to our knowledge of women's cultures and expressive forms. It provides a rare combination of a great depth of knowledge and coverage, and the capacity to open up a new dimension of inquiry. This is a brilliant, seminal book. -- Josephine Hendin, New York University
Table of ContentsIllustrations Preface By The Work of Their Hands Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Women Writing Cloth: An Introduction Chapter 2 Hester’s Needle: Mending New-World Fragmentation in The Scarlet Letter Chapter 3 Sister’s Choice and Celie’s Quilted Eloquence in The Color Purple Chapter 4 The Portable Rebozo: Cisneros’s Caramelo and Metafictional Histories Chapter 5 Bernardi’s Openwork and Italian Women’s Diasporas Epilogue È Finita. Pilón Bibliography
