Patch suggested by Hannah and designed and sewn by her friend Miriam Steinberg; writing by Miriam and Hannah
-----Original Message-----
From: Steinberg, Miriam
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 11:35 PM
To: Mermelstein, Hannah
Subject: patch
Hi Hannah. As you definitely already know, I was so honored that you asked me to make a patch for your quilt. And when you told me it was about vaginas -- well, it was so perfect. Before I designed and made the patch, I read the e-mail from your friend about the combined literacy/sex education workshops available to some women in Latin America (what country was it in?). The idea that women could learn about two such different and such important parts of life at the same time amazed me. A cause of women's oppression is not having control over or understanding of their bodies, and so having their sexuality defined by men. And of course another cause of oppression is lack of resources and education. In these workshops women learned how to read about their own bodies! It's so fantastic.
So I got this image of women learning from another woman, and then of course the idea you told me about having "Va-gi-na," broken up by syllables, like how you learn to read. But the reason vaginas have lately taken on this significance for me is that I had the extreme honor and privilege to perform in The Vagina Monologues at Goucher last week. It was such an empowering experience for us as actors and for the audience and so I had these two images going on at once of women empowered by truth and honesty about their bodies. So the "V" in "Va-gi-na" is a V-Day pin from the national movement in this country about using February 14 as a day to educate about violence against women, to perform The Vagina Monologues, and to spread the word about women's rights. I couldn't help writing this much right away, but respond, tell me what you think about this process, and of course the final product!
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From: Mermelstein, Hannah
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 12:00 AM
To: Steinberg, Miriam
Subject: RE: patch
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for writing... First, the country was Nicaragua. I'm learning a lot in this quilt process through books, but I love this story particularly because it comes (partly) from my own experience in Nicaragua. While I never attended any of the workshops, my friend Laura (who wrote that e-mail) conducted independent research about women's groups in Matagalpa, and one of the organizations she studied was the Colectivo de Mujeres de Matagalpa (Women's Collective of Matagalpa). She was able to go along to some of the literacy/sex ed. workshops with the Collective, and witnessed the transformation and empowerment (if after initial embarrassment) of women involved in the process.
You've summed up my feelings perfectly in talking about the importance of literary literacy (if you will) and bodily literacy. I am also so glad you were able to do a patch that had personal significance to you. You make it sound like I assigned you this patch, and like it was a happy coincidence that it applied to you. But like everything in this process, it was neither originally intended nor ultimately accidental. One of those times when we were sitting around talking about vaginas, I thought, "Hey, you can do the patch with the vagina!" And so it has come to be...
I loved the process of sewing together, bouncing ideas and materials back and forth all the time. I feel like the patches I make when I'm with other people come to mean more to me, and certainly your patch means more to me because I was there in the room when you gave birth to it (to paraphrase your monologue from the Vagina Monologues). :)
I'm wondering if you want to talk a little about how you chose the images you did (other than the word "vagina" which you already discussed), and how you chose the materials also... and anything else you want to say about the process.
thanks!
love hannah
-----Original Message-----
From: Steinberg, Miriam
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:03 AM
To: Mermelstein, Hannah
Subject: RE: patch
Well. That added background helps a lot. When looking at your patches, sometimes it's hard to remember that they're real stories and not just great artistic coincidences. Since I didn't see or experience the things you did, or the things depicted in the patches, it's hard for me to always grasp the realness of them. But as I made my patch, I felt like of course I knew why the women were there, why these workshops were important. I felt like part of the experience.
I think it's interesting, but can't entirely explain why, that in all my talk and thinking about the importance of giving women voice, the 4 women learning in my patch have their backs showing, and I chose to leave the teacher faceless. Though that's not giving them much voice, at the same time, there's a prominent image of a vagina, which is pretty strong "language."
Let's see, about the process and the fabric. First of all, I got the idea for how the seated women should look from your book about the arpillaras (that spelling is a total guess). The dresses of the four women learning are all fabrics that I brought from home for you to use in your quilt. The pink is a scrap from a shirt I made for myself and the purple, orange, and blue I'm almost positive are scraps from a shirt Adrienne (my best friend for my whole life) made. We made those shirts together, a really similar process actually, so it's fitting to use the scraps now for this project.
I was also really excited about having the one woman have gray hair to show the universality of issues about women's bodies -- all ages of women need to have this knowledge, which leads to power. The fabric for the teacher's dress is made of several different colors and I liked that it sort of brought all the women together. And even though you can only see their backs, as I began sewing and creating them, I felt like each one got a personality, each one is distinct and different and representative of women benefiting from these two kinds of literacy.
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From: Mermelstein, Hannah
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 8:47 PM
To: Steinberg, Miriam
Subject: RE: patch
Well, I feel like this pretty complete. Nothing more to add on this end.
Thank you!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Steinberg, Miriam
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 3:05 PM
To: Mermelstein, Hannah
Subject: RE: patch
thank you hannah!