Plantation Slave Weavers Remember – An Oral History

I am a self-taught weaver.  One day while enjoying the contentment of weaving and watching the pattern appear before me, I wondered if a slave woman, obligated to weave, might have ever had moments of enjoyment from her weaving.  This led me on a journey of research to find an answer to my question.  Along the way I found heartbreaking accounts such that I packed my research in a box, put it away for several months while I tried to gain some perspective so I would not be writing from a place of anger and resentment.  Coming back to my research, I found accounts and recollections that spoke to the triumph of spirit over despair.  It was also around this time that I found a picture of a coverlet that was documented to have been woven by an enslaved woman.  It was therapeutic to teach myself how to weave this pattern. The rest of the book flowed easily from this point to the end.