the narrative thread

I just returned from the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Held every year at the George R. Brown Convention Center, it is the largest annual quilt show in the country, considered the second largest in the world after Tokyo. Even though this is Texas, let’s not quibble about size: according to my fitbit, I logged six miles of walking in six hours there on Thursday alone!

This year’s Festival featured 1,700 quilts, 41 special exhibitions, 1,100 vendor booths and some 500 classes. Over 60,000 people came to see and shop — I swear they were ALL there when I was — and the show generated more than $40 million in revenue. All in all, not bad for “women’s work.”

The history of quilting, especially in America, is in fact “herstory.” With the exception of a few well-known men among the estimated 20 million active quilters in America (Ricky Tims, Kaffe Fassett, etc.), quilters, and most attendees at quilt shows, are overwhelmingly female. And they are, regardless of their skills and accomplishments, the awards they have won, or the businesses they have established, a surprisingly modest and unassuming bunch. They tend to be older, not very fashion-forward, and not very “international” in terms of sophistication and experience, but they are nice — very nice. Of all the huge-crowd events I have ever attended — sports, conventions, concerts, cruise ship embarkations  — only at quilt shows will people smile at you, say “Excuse me,” and let you go first or even cut in line. Nor are vendors distrusting as you as carry your little baskets around collecting purchases in their booths. Big shows or small, there are never any altercations. It’s amazing.

Looks are deceiving, as is the atmosphere. For example, a quilt show has none of the ambiance, or the snarkiness, of a gallery opening. You wander the crowds with these ordinary ladies probably unaware  of the fact that you are among some of the most creative, artistic and, in many cases, gifted individuals you are likely to encounter anywhere. The difference, I think, is that their art — my art— is a “domestic art,” an art of  “women’s work” in textiles: sewing, weaving, quilting, embroidery, crocheting, knitting, doll making. Only up until recently, in fact, has any of this sort of “women’s work” ever dared to be called art at all.

Historically a utilitarian occupation done by women for their families, or by slaves for their owner families, quilting was an important part of a girl’s education, a craft of skill and pride. The sewn fabric sandwich (two pieces of fabric with a batting in between) was a way to keep warm, a way to “make do” with leftover scraps, a way for women to socialize, to form a community, even to make a point. Quilts became valued family heirlooms recognized as repositories of history and the undocumented stories of women’s lives; gradually, they moved up in status from the bed to the wall. Antique collections from significant periods such as the  Civil War and commemoratives made in honor of significant events such as 9-11 have traveled around the country and drawn admiring crowds.

In the Victorian era, ladies of leisure made elaborate pieces called “crazy quilts”out of ribbon and lace, fringes and found objects, bits of love letters and other sentimental attachments. While still sandwiched and stitched, these creations were not really quilts at all, but rather small, ornamental pieces made to decorate parlors and to be given as gifts. All those frilly, delicately-embellished picture frames and memory books you see in crafts stores today are derivatives of that style.

Believe it or not, what we now call “art quilts,” defined by the Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA) as “a creative visual work that is layered and stitched or that references this form of stitched layered structure,” can also be traced back to those Victorian crazy quilts. The modern revival of interest in quilting by younger women began in the 1970s, in part as an outgrowth of the women’s movement and the quest to define a “female aesthetic” that elevated domestic crafts from kitsch to high art. The SAQA was founded in 1989 by a group of 50 fabric artists to promote the art quilt as an art form in its own right, one worthy of inclusion in museum exhibitions and private collections. Today, the SAQA has over 3,400 members; I am proud to be one of them.

Had Hillary won the 2016 election, I was going to end this post with the prediction that we were entering a new era of girl power and recognition, but now I’ll just continue quilting and offer my own interpretation of her concession speech instead: “A woman’s work is never done.”

Sandra Cisneros was in San Antonio last week, back from The White House after receiving  the National Medal of Arts, to speak and read from her new book of essays, A House of My Own.  As always, she was warm, funny, articulate, and very serious about her causes and concerns. Ever an advocate for women’s rights and Chicano culture, she is now engaged  in a cause célèbre against the phobias dividing our nation, especially what she calls Mexiphobia.

Her early bestseller, The House on Mango Street, (1984) has been translated into over 20 languages worldwide and is taught in almost every junior/high school in the country, even in college. Her stories of a girl in a Chicano neighborhood allow youngsters to see themselves and to identify with their culture, but the book has remained popular and relevant for more than 30 years because it deals with larger issues facing people everywhere, in every culture: race, class, gender, power, and poverty. When I met Cisneros the other night, I told her I had taught her work and had found it infinitely “teachable” on several levels. She gave me a big hug and said, “Thank you for your service to our young people.” I came away teary-eyed.

Like so many Americans whose ancestors immigrated here (or were indigenous) generations ago, I don’t especially identify with my English, Irish, German, French, Swedish, or Cherokee roots. Other than the fact that I speak English and am blond-haired and blue-eyed, I wouldn’t be readily placed in any one of these groups — except when I’m in Sweden, where almost everybody looks like me.

No, I am simply an American, with all the mixed ancestry and assimilated tastes that implies. My cultural identity is not formed by my family’s ethnic roots, but by the milieus in which I have lived and worked.  As the famous line from “Ulysses” states, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Indeed, how could it be otherwise in a land that is as vast and as diverse as America?

Having grown up in Southwest Texas, I describe my cultural background as Tex-Mex. We lived with my grandmother in an old farmhouse with a big wrap-around porch that stood on the last couple remaining acres of what had once been her family’s sizable ranch. It was in the oldest section of town known  as “Dutch Lane,” not because any Dutch ever lived there, but because the Germans who settled that area in the 1840s were referred to (erroneously) as Dutchmen. My mother was raised in that house and our family had been on the land for five generations.

Many of our neighbors were the descendants of people who had worked that ranch, mostly Mexicans who had lived there forever or who, over time, had left and then returned to establish new homes and businesses.  Needless to say, everyone knew us and we knew them. My grandmother spoke fluent Spanish, as well as German,  and  I was accustomed to hearing her engage in conversations with passers-by. Thus, I picked up the sounds, the rhythms, and the common vocabulary of Spanish. On warm summer nights, música norteña  floated through the air; on Saturday mornings, I was sent down the street to buy freshly-made corn tortillas.  We never ate wienerschnitzel or sauerbraten at my house, but we had enchiladas or tamales several times a week!

Hand-tooled leather, hammered silver, wrought-iron gates, tin ceilings, papel picados, cascarones,  pequeño peppers, cumbia dancing, tres leches cakes, La Semana Sancta, lace mantillas (which I wore instead of a wedding veil) — these are the familiars of my background. The sights, the sounds, the colors, the tastes, the duende of who I am are largely Mexican in origin, though I am not, in fact, of Mexican descent.

Now before somebody gets all “cultural appropriation” on me, let me suggest that the notion of America as a melting pot presumes that centuries of immigration will, if successful, produce a blended family of citizens who hold basic principles in common, while preserving and sharing the best of their own heritage and traditions with each other. That we are no longer a homogeneous society in terms of national origins seems,  to me, a positive sign that our grand experiment in democracy is  working — sometimes overtime, but working nonetheless. The key to success is remembering the “we.”

Sandra Cisneros has taken to wearing huipiles as a statement of her pride and identity as a Mexican American of las Americas, North and South; ironically, she has moved from San Antonio to an American ex-pat community in Mexico. And I find myself back in South Texas after decades in the Northeast, where I formed new tastes, new attitudes, and new traditions that now have to be reincorporated into my current Tex-Mex life.  If that’s appropriation, then so be it; I call it being American.