Women Writing Cloth

Reviews / Votes

Mary Jo Bona's Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary is a welcome addition to the study of many strands of American literature and erases the borders that divide American Literature into discrete ethno-racial fields. * Italian American Review * Women Writing Cloth envisions an American literature in which the textiles of the past and present are not all that different from each other but in fact can be stitched together to create a new, fresh narrative of American literary history. * Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature * Literary scholars and students of many stripes should find much to stimulate their research in this short gem of a book . . . Women Writing Cloth makes a valuable contribution to life writing scholarship and promises to generate lively debates among those whose own research covers one or more of the same themes as this volume. * Biography * Women Writing Cloth is a well-focused study not only of the role that needlework and knitting have played in the lives of women but also of how women's handwork finds its way into the literature we read and teach. Mary Jo Bona's book gives us the tools we need to begin reading cloth itself as a text . . . . Women Writing Cloth is a well-focused study not only of the role that needlework and knitting have played in the lives of women but also of how women's handwork finds its way into the literature we read and teach. Mary Jo Bona's book gives us the tools we need to begin reading cloth itself as a text. * MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. * Mary Jo Bona's Women Writing Cloth, a slim volume of traditional literary criticism endowed with a personalized feminist voice, reassesses the way we think about women characters in classic and contemporary literature by means of the shared motif of cloth work. . . . Her study serves as a useful basis for rethinking how we read all kinds of artworks and texts with traditional thread, yarn, and fabric scraps as part of a narrative medium. . . . Bona's personal interest in re-examining these stories via cloth work is present in the sincere feminist appreciation of the depictions of characters whose ethnic identities become inextricably connected to gendered craft. Her discussions of these texts are as carefully detailed and deliberate as the work her own relatives might have brought to an elaborate, hand-stitched embroidery project. . . . Bona's book provides a model for how to think about various prose narratives about women and craft. * Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies * In 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