Open AccessNEEDLEWORK AS POLITICAL AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVEL
Author(s) -
Nesrin Yavaş
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
homeros
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2667-4688
DOI - 10.33390/homeros.4.2.01
Subject(s) - quilting , scholarship , feminism , resistance (ecology) , american literature , politics , narrative , gender studies , american studies , sociology , aesthetics , literature , art , visual arts , political science , law , ecology , biology
Handcrafts like quilting, knitting, sewing, and cross-stitching have traditionally been viewed as a “woman’s thing,” a gendered leisure time activity. However, women’s handcrafts when read as texts can yield multi-layered narratives. With the coming of the second wave feminism in the US in the 1960s, many feminist scholars, critiques turned to study literary texts in which women’s handcrafts yielded political and/or cultural meanings. In fact, there is a bulk of scholarly literature on the representations of needlework in American literary tradition. The aim of this research paper is not to offer a comprehensive study on the representations of women’s handcrafts in American literary tradition but to bring attention to three contemporary American novels, Mama Day by African American feminist author Gloria Naylor, Four Souls by Native American Louise Erdrich, and Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. the study of which, I believe, will bring a new breath to the already existing scholarship on the topic.