Overview

Knitting, sewing, embroidery, quilting―throughout history, these and other forms of textile work have often been dismissed as merely ""women's work"" and attached to ideas of domesticity and obedience. Yet, as psychologist and avid knitter Nicole Nehrig explores in this captivating book, textile work has often been a way for women to exercise power. When their voices were silenced and other avenues were closed off to them, women used the tools they had―often a needle and thread―to seek freedom. With Her Own Hands brings together remarkable stories of women who have used textiles as a means of liberation, from an eighteenth-century Quaker boarding school that used embroidered samplers to teach girls math and geography to the Quechua weavers working to preserve and revive Incan traditions today, and from the Miao women of southern China who, in the absence of a written language, pass down their histories in elaborate ""story cloths"" to a midcentury British women's postal art exchange. Textiles have been a way for women to explore their intellectual capacities, seek economic independence, create community, process traumas, and convey powerful messages of self-expression and political protest. Heartfelt and deeply moving, With Her Own Hands is a celebration of women who have woven their own stories―and a testament to their resilience.

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Nicole Nehrig is a clinical and research psychologist and a passionate knitter and textile crafter living in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology. Jenn Lee has been a working actor since the age of eighteen, when she moved to New York city to star in the world's longest running musical, The Fantasticks, as the youngest Girl ever. She is a veteran of three Broadway shows, including Les Miserables (as both Cosette and Éponine). Jenn has trained classically with Esper Studios and the Actors Movement Studio. She has been a union member for over twenty-five years and worked both around the country and in Europe. Her career in voice-over includes three documentaries for PBS: The Swamp and The Great War and Custer for Ken Burns. With over forty books recorded, she continues to be a director, teacher, coach, cancer survivor, fabric artist, and mother!

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