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An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery

Amazon.com Price:  $19.00 (as of 06/05/2019 06:50 PST- Details)

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Description

Following the trail left by an unfinished quilt, this illuminating saga examines slavery from the cotton fields of the South to the textile mills of New England―and the humanity at the back of it. 

When we recall to mind slavery, most of us recall to mind the American South. We recall to mind back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don’t recall to mind slavery in the North, nor do we recall to mind the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May’s wealthy new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile The us, and the bonds between the agrarian south and the industrial north in the antebellum era―all over the discovery of a remarkable quilt.

While studying objects in a textile collection, May opened a veritable treasure-trove: a carefully folded, unfinished quilt made of 1830s-era fabrics, its backing containing fragile, aged papers with the dates 1798, 1808, and 1813, the words “shuger,” “rum,” “casks,” and “West Indies,” repeated again and again, at the side of “friendship,” “kindness,” “government,” and “incident.” The quilt top sent her on a journey to piece together the story of Minerva, Eliza, Jane, and Juba―the enslaved women at the back of the quilt―and their owner, Susan Crouch.

May brilliantly stitches together the continuously-silenced legacy of slavery by revealing the lives of these urban enslaved women and their world. Beautifully written and richly imagined, An American Quilt is a luminous historical examination and an appreciation of a craft that provides this sort of tactile connection to the past.

B&W illustrations all the way through

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