The book I have been eagerly awaiting arrived today.
It tells the stories of craftswomen from around the world. Bolivia, Guatemala, Zimbabwe, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, and India are a few of these craftswomens' countries.
Stories of strong, beautiful, resourceful, indomitable, creative women who turn war, poverty, and oppression into beauty, life, and hope for their families and communities.
Look at this weavers hair-- woven with yarn too! Oh, I love that.
I'm ready to read your stories and learn from your wisdom.... hands from around the world, making LIFE one stitch, one thread, one bead at a time.
a part of the preface from In Her Hands...
"When you read this informative book you will see how inescapable is the connection between today's misery in the so-called Third World and the overthrow of the peoples' way of life one, two , three, four, or five hundred years ago. I believe you will have powerful feelings in response to learning how meanly the loyalty and faithfulness of women have generally been repaid. Fo having endured the near absolute oppression of a greedy, brutal, racist colonialism, which often included literal enslavement and removal from homelands, many of these women suffer just as cruelly under the domination of their own patriarchal societies. You will begin to fine tune your focus so that perhaps for the first time you will really see who these women are. The ones at the very bottom. The ones that are so low down in status, as much of the world defines it, that they seem to be part of the earth itself. It is my great privilege to say, to add my witness, that indeed they are part of it. For there they sit in their mud and straw huts, or on their bare earth patios, or on the naked ground, spinning and weaving and making pots out of the mud of the lake, and they are in relation to and in a flow of creation that is as old as the planet. I think of them as goddesses.
The children of these women do not have to starve. They have mothers, as you will see, who are giving Life everything they've got. And we must stand with them. Learning their histories, appreciating their artistry, acknowledging their worth. The world we live in, the rich, Western one, says these women owe us. That they are in our debt because we loaned their leaders money to build dams or roads, or (most likely) to buy weapons. To force these women to sell their bodies, their children, and their health to pay a debt they did not themselves incur is the essence of evil. Meanwhile, the debts that they make for themselves, sometimes founding their own microbanks because "regular" banks consider women too ignorant to transact business, are scrupulously repaid. They place themselves in debt, not to buy weapons, or even beer and cigarettes, but to buy food, clothing, health care, and education for their children. They owe us nothing. And we must refuse to take the blood money our governments squeeze out of them. It is we who owe these women. We owe them for continuing to create art that sustains our spirits as surely as good food strengthens our bodies. We owe them for holding such an incredible place of suffering in this world, and for not giving up. We owe them for reminding us of the true meaning of love and of sacrifice. Of creativity and practicality. We owe them the rich nourishment we take from their courage."
Well, looks like I'm in for a fascinating read... I'll let you know. xoKelly
