{"product_id":"stitching-love-and-loss-a-gees-bend-quilt","title":"Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee's Bend Quilt by Lisa Gail Collins","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2023 Horowitz Prize by the Bard Graduate Center\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2025 James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Award in African American Art History from the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2024 Charles C. Eldredge Prize by the Smithsonian American Art Museum\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinalist for the 2024 Sterling Stuckey Book Prize by the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA meditation on suffering, resilience, creativity, and grace\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eIn 1942 Missouri Pettway, newly suffering the loss of her husband, pieced together a quilt out of his old, worn work clothes. Nearly six decades later her daughter Arlonzia Pettway, approaching eighty at the time and a seasoned quiltmaker herself, readily recalled the cover made by her grieving mother within the small African American farming community of Gee's Bend, Alabama.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt once a story of grief, a quilt, and a community, \u003ci\u003eStitching Love and Loss \u003c\/i\u003econnects Missouri Pettway's cotton covering to the history of a place, its residents, and the work of mourning. Interpreting varied sources of history and memory, Lisa Gail Collins engages crucial and enduring questions, simultaneously singular and shared: What are the languages, practices, and processes of mourning? How is loss expressed and remembered? What are the roles for creativity in grief? And how might a closely crafted material object, in its conception, construction, use, and memory, serve the work of grieving a loved one? Placing this singular quilt within its historical and cultural context, Collins illuminates the perseverance and creativity of the African American women quilters in this rural Black Belt community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eStitching Love and Loss\u003c\/i\u003e, the gifted art historian Lisa Gail Collins wraps an achingly beautiful story of artistry, family, community, and place around the form and function of one stunning Gee's Bend 'utility quilt.' \u003cspan\u003e--Tiya Miles\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA brilliant, moving, meticulously researched, beautifully written book that captures the long history of African American quilt making. The book is a praisesong for the artistry, resilience, and resistance of Black women in Alabama's rural Black Belt. \u003cspan\u003e--Beverly Guy-Sheftall\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eStitching Love and Loss\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis an interdisciplinary study as multilayered as the pieced-together quilt at its core. . . Collins's precise yet poetic prose evokes gut-wrenching images of a wife and mother tending to her wounds and feeling her husband's presence through the material remnants of his life.\" \u003cspan\u003e-- \"Hyperallergic\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Based on over a decade of research and three trips to Gee's Bend, Collins's book analyzes Pettway's quilt visually and materially from the stains on the knees of her husband Nathaniel's work clothes to her daughter Arlonzia's memories of the quilt. Together these stories weave the historical impact of slavery, poverty, spirituality, and community in Gee's Bend, providing a deeper understanding of the role of quilts within the Southern Black Belt of Alabama.\" \u003cspan\u003e-- \"CAA Reviews\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"[Collins] offers her readers a different sort of journey, an emotive contemplation--at times rumination--on the nature of grief as it may have been expressed in one rural, Black Alabama family through the creation of one utilitarian quilt.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eLisa Gail Collins\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is Professor of Art and Director of American Studies on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair at Vassar College. Her books include \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (coedited with Margo Natalie Crawford).\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher: University of Washington Press\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePub Date: 2025-04-02\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eISBN: 9780295753751\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePages: 200\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ingram","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45576320057530,"sku":"9780295753751","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0444\/2213\/5968\/files\/imageloader_7137e7d3-b8ca-4e61-bc56-01523a28729f.jpg?v=1770782698","url":"https:\/\/naturenurture.shop\/products\/stitching-love-and-loss-a-gees-bend-quilt","provider":"nature+nurture","version":"1.0","type":"link"}