Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary by Mary Jo Bona

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary by Mary Jo Bona Ann M. Ciasullo WOMEN WRITING CLOTH: MIGRATORY FICTIONS IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINARY, by Mary Jo Bona. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 158 pp. $83.00 cloth; $78.50 ebook. In what is perhaps her most famous poem, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (1951), Adrienne Rich tells the story of a woman oppressed by the patriarchal structures of marriage and by her husband specifically. For Aunt Jennifer, needlework is both a source of artistic expression and a site of freedom, albeit limited by the "massive weight of Uncle's wedding band."1 Though immobilized in her own life (and death) by the "ordeals she was mastered by," Aunt Jennifer is able to express a desire for beauty and mobility through her remarkable stitchings of tigers, who, "prancing, proud and unafraid," bespeak the greater possibilities for women's lives (p. 4). The enduring connections between women's handwork, mobility (or lack thereof), and creativity are the focal point of Mary Jo Bona's noteworthy monograph Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary. An important contribution to the fields of American ethnic literature and American women's literature alike, Bona's study examines how various forms of handwork—embroidery, quilts, rebozos, tablecloths—make movement and migration possible for fictional women across a range of eras and literary traditions. As Bona notes in her preface, the connection between women and handwork has a long history, "with Penelope's tale in Homer's Odyssey serving as the well-known prototype in Western paradigms" (p. xi). What makes Bona's study so impressive is that it focuses on seemingly disparate texts and weaves them together thematically in a way that is at once seamless and insightful. Bona's theoretically robust introduction (chapter one) provides readers with an important grounding in and overview of the key theories that inform her analysis, primarily ethnic American literary studies and feminist thought. From this foundation, she creates her own analytical quilt through "sustained close readings" of four novels that differ dramatically in setting, characterization, style, and narrative form (p. 18). [End Page 243] Bona stitches together the thematic relationship between these texts to great effect. In chapter two, Bona turns her attention to what is arguably the most canonical of the four American novels she examines (and the only one authored by a male writer): Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). Bona offers a fresh, incisive reading of Hawthorne's tale by focusing on the ways in which Hester Prynne's rebellion manifests through her needlework. Arguing that Hester's pre- and post-migration life are unified through her role as a seamstress, Bona underscores the contradiction inherent in Hawthorne's most famous female character; Hester is at once "social pariah" and "community needlewoman," which "paradoxically enhances her freedom of movement about the town" (p. 28). Put another way, Hester's mobility is to some extent an effect of her "sin" and concomitant ostracization. What is most impressive in this chapter is Bona's measured yet generous reading of Hester. Noting that Hester's return to New England in the end "can be read as both a reflection of her radical individualism and Hawthorne's conservative response to the gendered limitations of her freedom," Bona highlights how Hester's needlework allows her to mend the "new-world fragmentation" of the Puritans (pp. 21, 39). As Bona puts it, "the weapon of resistance Hester possesses is in her hands—as a seamstress for the community and for Pearl" (p. 30). For Hester, embroidery functions not only as a creative outlet for an oppressed woman but ultimately as the gateway to freedom and mobility. In the remainder of the monograph, Bona continues her examination of the complicated relationship between handwork, mobility, and identity in three female-authored American novels: Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982), Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo (2002), and Adria Bernardi's Openwork (2007). Connecting the canonical with the contemporary, Bona achieves what she identifies in her introduction as one of the key goals of her study: to "show 'pulled threads' of connection between the chapters" (p. 17). Readers of American literature...