Quilting as Metaphor of Resilience

• In Event: Black Women’s Quilting as Critical Sociality

Abstract

The art of quilting serves as both art and metaphor in the works of Contemporary African-American women writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Gloria Naylor. Both women deeply understood quilt-making as a form of artistic expression and they utilized the quilt-making process of “adorning” and “patterning” as the “construction of narrative.” Quilting as a metaphor is the rich technique found in Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Naylor’s Mama Day (1988). Hurston and Naylor demonstrate their reverence for the practice by infusing their narratives with the cultural resilience that comes from women gathering and sharing their gifts.

Presenter

• Aletha Osborne-Cole, Malcolm X College of Chicago