Abstract
This article examines narrative strategies present in picturebooks about slavery that feature quilts. Against the depicted dangers of slavery, images of quilts serve to offer a sense of hope and in that way they provide a means of discussing difficult subjects with very young readers. As a central image in these texts, the quilt is variously represented as an artifact of remembrance, an image of hope, a type of testimony, and a sign of safety. This article focuses on a selection of texts to explore how verbal and visual images work to present and mitigate issues of historical violence. Additionally, the ways the image of the quilt intra- and extra-textually functions as a metanarrative comment on the construction of picturebooks are examined.
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Notes
Shaw notes that Tubman had made a quilt that she considered “the most beautiful thing she ever owned” (2009, p. 106).
See White, 1985, pp. 70–76 regarding the particular problems women faced in trying to flee slavery.
See Ferrero et al., 1987, pp. 69–73, and Bassett, 2009, pp. 173–180 regarding women’s handiwork sold at anti-slavery fairs. Also see Child (1837) for an account of an infant’s quilt inscribed with abolitionist text sold at a fair. Bassett, 2009, pp. 175, 176 has photographs of this quilt. Ferrero notes that the names women gave quilt patterns—such as “Underground Railroad” and “Slave Chain”—demonstrated growing abolitionist sentiment among Northern women (p. 69). Also see Benberry, 1992, p. 31 and “Anti-Slavery Fair,” 1834, regarding black women’s participation in Anti-Slavery Fairs.
For different views on this issue, see Tobin and Dobard, 1999, whose book has been the center of much debate; Shaw, 2009, pp. 106–108; and Brackman, 2006. Vaughan (The Secret to Freedom, 2001) and Stroud (The Patchwork Path, 2005) note Tobin and Dobard’s book as a source for their depictions of quilt-maps.
See Keifer (1995, pp. 121–137) and Stewig (1995, pp. 33–90) for discussion of visual elements in picturebooks. Artist and writer Faith Ringgold offers, perhaps, the most direct comparison between quilts and picturebooks in her own work, particularly in the ways her children’s picturebooks draw from her story quilts. See Ringgold, 1995, pp. 258–261 and Millman, 2005.
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Paula T. Connolly is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she teaches courses in Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Culture.
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Connolly, P.T. “Texts Like a Patchwork Quilt”: Reading Picturebooks About Slavery. Child Lit Educ 44, 29–43 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-012-9175-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-012-9175-2